


Visitation of the Ghost

by mikeyflippinway (mythomusicians)



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: College, Ghosts, M/M, i dont wanna give anything away lol, ill add more tags as the story develops okokok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:51:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5415887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythomusicians/pseuds/mikeyflippinway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dallon, seriously in all seriousness. I was not moving it!” Ryan insisted again. “There's a ghost in your home named Brendon who wants to fuck you!”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this started as a one-shot but then it got out of hand lol oops  
> the tags and warnings will definitely change as i post more so  
> also i personally am not a huge joshler fan, but what i was writing only really seemed to work for the two of them  
> also that part probably won't show up for a couple chapters down the line  
> xoxo

Home for the holidays.

It was Dallon's first semester at college, and he did pretty average on all his finals, had classes planned for his next semester, the same ol’ boring stuff. He was still undecided as to what to major in. There were too many options and taking a semester or two to get the core classes out of the way seemed to make sense to him, until he could figure out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. Thankfully though, his two other friends were in the same boat as him. Kenny, Spencer, and himself all graduated high school together with plans to go to the same local community college until they got a grip on what they wanted to do.

But now he was back home. And with nearly a month before the next semester starts up, Dallon had plenty of time to kill. He texted their usual group chat, asking the two if they wanted to spend the weekend at his house. It was the weekend after Christmas, so no doubt they had plenty of stuff to show off to each other. The two quickly agreed, but Spencer asked if Ryan could be invited. Dallon gave it some thought. He didn't really know Ryan too well, he’d talked to him a few times, but he and Spencer had most of their classes together and the two became fast friends. If Spencer was friends with him, Dallon supposed it wouldn't be a problem if he wanted to invite him.

Saturday night, the four guys were hanging out in Dallon’s basement playing some new video game that Kenny was eager to show off. Dallon wasn't really into ‘shoot em up’ games though, which definitely showed in his end-game score.

“Hey so have you guys heard of, like, ouija boards and shit?” Ryan suddenly asked, setting down his game controller and heading to the bag of stuff he packed.

“That's all horseshit and you know it.” Spencer commented as Ryan pulled out what looked to be a board game from his bag. He shrugged as he joined the group again, opening the lid and pulling out the board.

“I don't think you'd want to upset the _spirits_ in here.” Ryan raised an eyebrow at Spencer as he rolled his eyes.

“Are we sure we want to mess with this kind of stuff?” Kenny asked more than a little hesitantly. “Those things are never good news.”

“Are you _scared_?” Ryan laughed as he set the board down between everyone, grabbing the planchette from the box before shoving the box off to the side.

Dallon hesitated himself. He'd always been rather interested by this kind of stuff, but his overly religious family had completely forbade him from even looking at one of these things. He couldn't help but be curious about this.

“Got any candles down here?” Ryan asked Dallon, who nodded in response as he stood up to go and retrieve some. “Gotta set the mood, y’know?”

“Are we really doing this?” Kenny frowned, staring at the board as if it was suddenly going to come alive.

“It's harmless if you do it properly.” Ryan said, taking the three candles from Dallon and setting them on the nearby table as Dallon went to go flick off the lights. The only light source now was the paused television screen, until Ryan grabbed a lighter from his pocket and lit the candles.

“I don't see why you believe in this stuff. It's all garbage.” Spencer repeated as everyone sat on the floor around the board.

“If it isn't real then you have no reason to be scared.” Ryan laughed, putting two fingers on the planchette and motioning for everyone else to do the same.

Kenny was the last to follow suit, still utterly terrified at the fact something would go wrong.

“Are there any spirits sitting with us?” Ryan asked into the tense quietness, everyone's eyes glued onto the small pointer they were all touching.

At first nothing happened. It felt like nothing would. But after a few seconds, the pointer started moving slowly up the board.

“Ryan stop it!” Kenny complained as the planchette continued moving.

“I'm not doing anything!” Ryan insisted, watching as it stopped above the word ‘no’.

Dallon tried to hold back laughter at that. “What a sarcastic spirit.”

“You're only laughing because you're the one moving it.” Spencer assumed, narrowing his eyes at Dallon, who quickly shook his head in response.

“Why would I?”

Ryan cleared his throat to get everyone to calm down, looking back at the planchette. “Do you have a name?” The pointer moved almost immediately over to the left, stopping above ‘yes’. “Rather eager to share, hm?” Ryan laughed a bit, which caused Spencer to roll his eyes again, mumbling about how this was all bullshit.

The pointer started moving again, making its first stop at ‘B’, then continuing on to spell a name.

“...Brendon?” Dallon questioned. “The spirit’s name is Brendon?”

“It appears so.” Ryan nodded, and Kenny shivered, still uneasy with this whole thing. “Brendon. Thanks for answering us.” He looked to the others. “Is there anything you guys would like to ask him?”

“How did you die?” Dallon asks into the quiet room. The pointer doesn't move for a good few seconds before it slowly makes its way to ‘no’.

“Guess he _isn't_ eager to share.” Spencer said with a shrug, still not caring about this whole thing. “Whatever.”

The planchette suddenly starts moving without being prompted, spelling out the word ‘love’.

“What's that mean? Love? Does it have to do with his death?” Kenny asked frantically, trying to make sense of it all. Once again the pointer moved, taking its time to spell out ‘home’.

“Love home?” Kenny furrowed his brow in confusion before looking to Ryan for some sort of interpretation.

Ryan was definitely trying to figure out what this was about, going through the possibilities before a smirk came cracking across his face. “Dallon has an admirer.”

“What?” Dallon made a face and shook his head, doubting that's what the spirit had meant.

“Love, home. This is your home isn't it?” Ryan grinned as Dallon shook his head again. “Brendon, do you like Dallon Weekes?”

The planchette seemed to almost jump over to the word ‘yes’.

“Okay, haha.” Dallon frowned, not liking to be played around with like this. “Funny.”

“It wasn't me!” Ryan insisted again.

“ _Bullshit_.” Spencer agreed with Dallon.

“With Dallon away from home for these past few months, were you lonely?” Kenny asked, deciding to play along with this obvious prank now. The planchette moved away from the yes before quickly going back to it.

“Your ghost missed you, Dallon.” Ryan laughed a bit, and this time it was Dallon who rolled his eyes instead of Spencer.

“Okay, I think that's enough.” Dallon said, shaking his head. “Let's just say goodbye to this thing-”

The pointer made its way to the letters, spelling out ‘stay’.

“Seriously, whoever is doing this just stop.” Dallon frowned, getting rather uncomfortable about this now. “It isn't funny.”

“It isn't a joke!” Ryan huffed. “I'm not moving the damn thing!”

Dallon’s frown stayed on his face, wondering how long he'll keep up this charade. “Okay, _Brendon_ , it was nice to meet you, but I think we should get going.”

The planchette moved to spell out ‘love’ once more, and Dallon gave Ryan a look, who would have put his hands up defensively if the board was closed. One of the number one rules, never let your hands leave the planchette until you've closed the board.

“It was nice to speak with you, thank you, Brendon.” Ryan said, moving the planchette over to the words ‘goodbye’ that sat at the bottom of the board. Everyone removed their hands and Ryan set the pointer back in the box.

“Dallon's got a ghost boyfriend.” Spencer laughed loudly, soon followed by Kenny and Ryan.

“You guys are jerks.” Dallon huffed, standing up to head to the couch he'd be sleeping on. “Just because I haven't had a boyfriend before it doesn't mean you can joke around with that stuff.”

“Dallon, seriously in all seriousness. I was _not_ moving it!” Ryan insisted again. “There's a ghost in your home named Brendon who wants to fuck you!”

Spencer howled in laughter at that, earning a middle finger held up from Dallon's direction as he laid down, turning away from his friends so he could try and focus on getting some rest.

He tuned out their mumbles about him being a ‘party pooper’ as he tried to not dwell on the whole ouija board thing. Dallon couldn't help but feel off now. He was probably just on edge from the spooky scenario. There wasn't a ghost in his home that liked him. That’d just be silly. Dallon closed his eyes, trying to keep his mind off of the strange pressure he felt against his chest as he did.

Just getting worked up.

That's all.

**< +><+>**

Everyone left Dallon’s home about mid-day the next day, with plans to go see a movie later on. His parents were still out from when they left for church that morning, so Dallon was alone. Usually he wouldn’t give it a second thought. He’d be home by himself hundreds of thousands of times before. But since last night’s events, he couldn’t help but feel off. Yeah he knew it was probably one of the guys screwing around with him, but if there really was a ghost in his home… He shivered at the thought, trying to distract himself by going over his schedule for next semester of classes, not having much else to do.

As he was reading through, Dallon could have sworn he heard a noise from somewhere in his room, and it was as if the room got at least ten degrees colder. He stared out into the nothingness, expecting to see one of the guys just fooling around and trying to scare him, but he didn’t see a single thing. He furrowed his brow but before he could go back to looking at the schedule, he heard something fall. Dallon turned around to see that it was just a pencil that was sitting on his desk. It could have easily just rolled off by itself right? Pencils can roll off desks, that doesn’t mean there’s a ghost in his room right now. After staring at the pencil for the better half of a minute, Dallon sighs and takes out his laptop from under the bed he was sitting on, opening it up and going to the browser. Into the search bar, _I can’t believe I’m actually doing this_ , he types in ‘how to talk to ghosts’.

“This is ridiculous…” Dallon mumbles to himself as he clicks on one of the links provided, reading through a giant wall of text that followed. The first method was to use a ouija board, again, but to use one of those things, or most of the options that the site gave, he needed to have more than just himself here. And there was no way he was gonna call one of the guys to come and help him talk to this fictional ghost that seemed to apparently like him. It was all a joke anyway, wasn’t it?

After scrolling through a while longer, he decides the only thing he could do right now was to make something called a dowsing pendulum. The site called for something like a crystal hanging from a string of sorts, but Dallon didn’t have anything like that around. But, he figured, something small hanging from something would probably be like the same thing, right?

After a moment of searching around, Dallon decided to take that pencil that had fallen over to use as the ‘crystal’. It was rather a nub of a pencil anyway, so it wouldn’t be too big or whatever. As for what to hang it from, gazing around his room he came across an old set of earbuds that had stopped working in one ear years ago, so he chose to snip the wire with some scissors to tie it around the eraser end of the pencil. Thankfully, the very makeshift contraption seemed to hold up just fine.

Dallon looked over at his laptop screen once more before shutting it and trying to focus on whether or not this ghost was actually here. It said to ask the spirit to come forward and show what a ‘yes’ answer would look like. The unfortunate thing about this method is that it seemed that he could only ask yes or no questions, but it was all he had right now. He cleared his throat, speaking a bit quietly. “Brendon? Are you in here?” He paused for a moment as he watched his makeshift pendulum. After a second of being completely still, it slowly started swinging to the left and right. “Is… is that a yes?” The pencil kept swinging as it was, so he figured that it meant that it was. Which meant that Brendon was really here with him. Or his mind was playing tricks on him now. Dallon took a deep breath, trying to think of what he could ask if the ghost really was here. “Have, uh, have you been dead for a while?” He asked finally once the pencil had stopped moving. It started swinging to the left and right again. “A while… Does that mean over a hundred years kind of thing or?” The pendulum changed its course, moving to and from Dallon this time, which he figured had meant ‘no’. “Closer to maybe fifty or so?” This time it went back to left and right. So the ghost hadn’t been dead for too long, it seemed. Still though, fifty years, give or take, was still a while in Dallon’s book.  
  
Dallon took a few minutes to think of something else he could ask. “Do… uh, do you actually like me?” He regretted asking it as soon as it left his mouth. He was coming off as self-centered to Brendon. But then again, if the ghost had been in his home for what seemed to be his entire life, the ghost probably watched him grow up. That… was kind of strange. Dallon was broken by this thoughts when he saw the pencil swing left and right again. “What about everyone else? Like my mom and dad-” Before he could finish his question, it started moving back and forth, signalling a ‘no’ once again. Dallon sighed as he kept staring at the pencil. Figured as much. A ghost probably wouldn’t be overly keen about the super religious sycophants that were his parents. “There has to be a better way to do this.” Dallon frowned, not liking being limited by yes or no questions. Even though it hadn’t been a question directed toward Brendon, the pencil swung left and right again.  
There’s a better way to do this? An easier way to talk with the ghost?  
  
Dallon shifted a bit uneasily as he felt the room get a bit colder once again, then feeling a sort of heavy weight against his chest making it a bit difficult to breathe. He took a few moments before closing his eyes, his mind seeming to be screaming one word over and over: ‘Relax’. Dallon chose to listen to the advice, taking another deep, albeit shaky, breath before forcing himself to relax, lying down on his bed. He tried his best to untense himself, and as he did, he felt the weight against his chest grow a bit more, causing a shiver to run through him. _Relax, relax…_ He kept telling himself.  
Worst case scenario it really was nothing, right? It was probably just his mind spooked from last night. He mentally shook his head to try and clear his thoughts, figuring that they would be getting in the way of the relaxed state he felt that he was supposed to be in. Feeling something cold against his hand, Dallon’s first reaction was to quickly move his hand away, but he decided against that. The cold feeling stayed, and he did he best not to dwell on it.  
“Dallon? Dal, can you hear me?”

Hearing the unfamiliar voice caused Dallon’s eyes to open quickly as he sat back up straight even quicker. All at once the cold feeling on his left hand seemed to disappear. Who was that? That voice. Was that Brendon? Dallon tried to calm back down, his breathing a bit too fast from what had just occurred. That had to have been Brendon. There was nothing else it could have been. It in no way sounded like any of his friend’s voices, so it couldn’t have been one of them playing some elaborate prank on him. It _had_ to have been Brendon. There was no other explanation.

“You’re… you’re really real?” Dallon asked quietly into the silence of his room, but received no response of any sort. He took a deep breath as he leaned his back against the wall, closing his eyes in attempt to relax again. Brendon seemed to want to talk to him, and the only thing that had worked was getting into the sort of meditative state that he had been in prior. He willed himself to relax once more, hoping that he hadn’t scared off the ghost that had taken an interest in him for some reason.

After a few minutes of silence, he felt the coldness against his hand once again, quickly followed by a, “Don’t freak out again.”. Dallon wanted to. This shouldn’t be making sense. It shouldn’t be possible. Ghosts couldn’t be real.  
“...Brendon?” Dallon asked, keeping his eyes shut and trying to keep as calm as he could.

“Oh thank _fuck_ I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for ages.”  
“You’re…-”  
“Okay _seriously_? We finally get to talk and you’re _still_ wrapped up about the fact that ghosts exist?” Dallon heard the voice say impatiently. “I’m here, we’re real, that’s that.”  
Dallon couldn’t help but to laugh a bit, remembering to when they used the board last night and he made a comment about it being a sarcastic spirit. He didn’t seem to be wrong. “Okay. Brendon.” Dallon took another breath, trying his best still not to freak out. “How long have you been here?”  
“Maybe about thirty years? Maybe closer to forty? I don’t know, I’ve kind of lost track.”  
“Did you live here before us?”  
“Yeah.” Brendon’s tone seemed to say he wasn’t quite ready to share all the details of himself. “But that’s enough of me. I finally get to talk to _you_.”  
“Uh… so it was you that we were talking to last night right?” Dallon asked.  
“Don’t waste your energy on dumb questions, Dal.” Brendon laughed, and as he did he felt more coldness against his left side.

“Is that you?” Dallon couldn’t help but ask. It felt as if someone was leaning against him.

“Why don’t you open your eyes and look?”  
Dallon did as indicated, but saw nothing beside him.

“It’s hard enough for me to keep up contact like this, there’s no way I have enough energy to materialize, you dummy.” Brendon said. “But if you’re talking about how you feel the cold, yeah. That’s me.”

Dallon kept looking to where the cold was touching him, hoping that he could at least maybe see an outline or something of the ghost, but it looked like he was physically alone in here. “Alright…” He managed to say after a while of trying to take it all in. Brendon was real, and was sitting close beside him like this.   
“The only way I’m here is because you were willing to share your energy with me to communicate.”

Dallon looked down at his hand, trying to imagine Brendon’s laying on top of his. “So, um, what Ryan interpreted what you meant last night-”

“Dal, I seriously like you okay? Like, a whole ton.”  
Dallon’s cheeks grew rather red at hearing Brendon’s voice say that.  
“Then you go and leave me for four months, what the hell?”  
“College.” Dallon shrugged as an answer. It suddenly sort of hits him how strange this all is. Talking to a ghost that seemed to really like him for whatever reason. Just a normal typical conversation. It shouldn’t be possible.  
“Don’t go back.” Dallon felt the weight against his chest again at Brendon’s words. “I don’t know if I could follow.”

“Brendon-”

“Don’t leave me again, Dal. I missed you.”

“Brendon, I don’t even really know you.” Dallon said. He only became aware of his existence last night by total chance. Even if Brendon said that he really liked him, Dallon couldn’t form an opinion on him if he didn’t know anything about him.

“Fine, ask away.” He heard Brendon say. “But if I don’t want to answer certain questions, don’t pry.”

“Got it.”

**< +><+>**

For the most part, Brendon proved to be mostly an open book, as long as he didn’t ask him questions about his death or what had lead to it. Brendon explained about how even though he couldn’t leave the house, since he was more or less bound to it, there were places where the veil between the two worlds were thin and he could pass through there. When Dallon had asked him what it meant, all he answered with was “I do have friends, y’know.”  
“From other places? Like, other ghosts?”  
“Yeah. When we’re out in the living world like this, unless there are certain circumstances, most of us can only stay within the area we died. But when we’re in the land of the dead, it’s free-reign. We can go wherever.”  
“That seems pretty cool. What’re your friends like?” Dallon was curious about this. It meant that Brendon wasn’t the only ghost. Which he figured wasn’t the case anyway.

“I’ve known Gabe since I first woke up dead.” Brendon started explaining. “He’s, uh, something special I guess. Optimistic even though he’s been dead for years and years. He won’t tell me anything about how he died other than the fact it involved a snake- sorry, cobra. Something involving a cobra.”  
Dallon raised an eyebrow in confusion, wondering why he had to make a point that it was one thing and not the other.  
“More recently, like within the past year or two, there’s been Tyler. He’s almost always out in the living world though. He hasn’t really talked a lot about his life there, but he keeps asking me and Gabe how he could go about talking to the living.” Brendon seemed to hold a tone of sadness, pity maybe, in his voice. “He doesn’t like how the living have to be the first to make contact. According to some others, apparently they’ve seen him conjuring up flowers to leave at someone’s home. Seems personal to me, I don’t want to ask.”  
“Conjure?” Dallon asked.

“Yeah, some spirits get lucky when they die and are able to use some sort of magic.”

“Are you one of those?”

“Haven’t tried.” Brendon admitted. “It takes a lot of energy to do like literally anything out here in the living world. I think if I tried anything I would be pushed back into the land of the dead until I had enough energy to return. That’s what happens to Tyler. He uses up all his energy making those flowers appear and ends up stuck in the land of the dead for like a week before he could return, and he does the same thing every time.”

“Sounds like whoever those flowers are for is important to him.” Dallon guessed.

“Just like you are to me.” Dallon felt the coldness surround him, and at this point he could only guess that Brendon was giving him a hug. He still didn’t understand Brendon’s apparent infatuation with him. Why was he important to the ghost? He had to admit to himself, though, the surrounding cold was oddly comforting.

About a minute passed before Dallon looked over at the time. “I gotta get going. I promised I’d meet my friends at the mall.”  
The coldness stayed. “You don’t need them, I’m here.”

Dallon sighed quietly. As much as he was enjoying Brendon’s company, he didn’t want to blow off his friends. What would he tell them? _Hey sorry, couldn’t go see the movie with you because I was busy with that ghost we were talking to last night_. Yeah, that’d go over well. “Brendon-”

And with that, the coldness suddenly left his side. Dallon sighed again, closing his eyes and hoping that he didn’t offend the ghost. Talking to Brendon was nice. A bit strange, speaking aloud to nothing though. As he went to open his eyes again, he felt the cold return, specifically right against his mouth. When his eyes fully opened, he could have sworn he’d actually seen someone right in front of him. All he’d managed to see was the person’s figure, but all too soon it was gone. It still seemed that he was still physically alone in here, despite his heart racing ten times faster now.

Was that Brendon he’d seen?

And did he _kiss_ him?


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> w o w i didnt think people would like this story so much from just one chapter????  
> thank u for the comments and kudos whao  
> allow me to show my thanks by letting you know by the end of this whole fic youll be in a puddle of tears lol theres ur warning  
> <3xoxo

“Dallon, what the fuck took you so long?” Spencer frowned as Dallon joined their group of friends in line for tickets for the movie.

_Oh, you know, held up by a ghost kissing me, same ol’._ Dallon somehow thought that wouldn't have been a good response. “Just-just traffic.” Dallon insisted, shaking his head. “It's close to rush hour time anyway so traffic was crap.”

The guys seemed to buy his lie, figuring it made enough sense.

“Maybe you were held up by your new boyfriend.” Ryan joked, earning a frown from Dallon as a redness creeped up to his cheeks.

“How long are you guys gonna keep saying it was real?” Dallon said as they bought their tickets. “There's no ghost in my house and you know it.” He somehow felt that they wouldn't believe him if he'd said otherwise. Maybe another time, but not right now.

“The board said otherwise!” Kenny laughed. “That spirit seemed to really like you.”

“Maybe Brendon’s an incubus or some shit.” Spencer pondered as they entered the theatre. “Did you wake up with a hard-on?”

“Wha-no!” Dallon huffed, shaking his head quickly.

“He's lying. Why else would he have wanted us out of his house before we got together later?” Kenny raised an eyebrow, having fun playing along with their joke.

“He's got a point there.” Spencer grinned, glad that Kenny was backing him up on this.

“Because I had to clean up the mess that you guys made before my parents would be home, and I know you wouldn't have been any help!” Dallon insisted, wanting to take the topic off of Brendon.

“You think so lowly of us?” Ryan put on a hurt face, and the other two seemed to follow suit.

“Ouch, Dal.”

“That really stung, man.” Spencer whined, causing a loud groan from Dallon.

“I can't win, so why even try to fight back?” Dallon sighed in defeat, knowing there was no way he would hear the end of this.

“Good, looks like you're learning.” Ryan grinned and patted Dallon’s back before they took their seats.

**< +><+>**

The movie itself wasn’t all too interesting to Dallon. It was something that Ryan and Spencer had wanted to go see, so he and Kenny tagged along with them. Dallon could see how Spencer became such close friends with Ryan so quickly. He seemed like a great guy to have as a friend. Even if he did keep teasing him about the whole ghost thing.

“Mind if we crash at your place again tonight?” Spencer asked Dallon. “Despite being home for the holidays, not really interested in my family getting in my business all the time.” He frowned and shook his head before continuing. “‘What're your classes like?’, ‘how's your roommate?’, ‘meet any girls?’.” Spencer shivered at that thought, shaking his head again. “Fuckin’ sucks.”

“I dunno.” Dallon sighed. He was rather looking forward to maybe talking to Brendon some more. “Two nights in a row is a bit much.”

“You can hang at my place, Spence. At least it isn't haunted.” Ryan offered, glancing at Dallon.

“Don't you think the joke’s gone on long enough?” Dallon huffed.

“Swear on my fucking life I wasn't moving it.” Ryan said defensively.

“Yeah, whatever.” Dallon rolled his eyes, wanting them to get off this topic. He knew Ryan was right. Brendon existed. But they didn't know that. Didn't believe that. Not really. “You guys have fun, I'm gonna go.” Dallon turned heel and waved at them before hurrying to his car in the parking lot, hoping Brendon would still be up for talking once he got back home.

**< +><+>**

When he got back, Dallon said a quick hello to his parents who were making dinner before going up to his room. Opening the door left him more than a little in shock. His room was in total disarray. Blankets and pillows strewn about the place, papers messed up on the ground around his desk, the small garbage can knocked over, posters half hanging off his wall.

“What-”

Dallon was cut off by feeling a cold sensation against his hand.

“You left. I panicked.”

“Brendon? You-”

“I thought you'd be leaving for four months again.”

Dallon sighed, shaking his hand free of the cold before going to start cleaning up the mess. “I said I was going out with my friends.”

This time he felt the cold on his shoulder as he was sorting through the messed up papers. “That doesn't mean you would've been back.”

Dallon sighed loudly again, trying not to get annoyed with this ghost now. Brendon seems to be rather… possessive. No pun intended. “Can you just let me clean this up?”

“...you're angry with me.”

Dallon groaned and shook his head after a moment. “Not angry. Just-”

“Okay I get it. Uh. I'll-I'll go visit Gabe or some shit. Sorry for the mess. Love ya.”

Before Dallon could say anything else, the coldness left, which he could only assume that meant Brendon had left too. Love. How could Brendon say he loves him? It just makes no sense to him how Brendon could feel so strongly about him even though he knows next to nothing about the ghost.

**< +><+>**

By the time he finished cleaning the mess that Brendon had caused, said ghost hadn't seemed to come back. Or he was back and just wasn't talking to him. Dallon decided that it'd be a good time now to go socialize with his family at dinner. Thrilling.

Dinner was rather uneventful. His parents were talking about what he'd missed at church because his friends were keeping him busy, and Dallon had to assure them that friends don't come before religion or whatever, Dallon rather tuned out their religious speak. It wasn't that he didn't accept it or whatever, he just felt they took it way too seriously. He was sure missing a few church sermons wasn't going to make it so he wouldn't be granted access to Heaven. Dallon excused himself and went to retreat back to his room, but this time he wasn't greeted by a cold presence. Either Dallon made him upset or he was still with his other ghost friend. Dallon decided not to show it concerned him, in case he was here and watching, and instead went to his desk to busy himself with drawing for a little while.

**< +><+>**

Roughly ten or so minutes later, Dallon finally felt a chill take over the room. He set down his pencil and glanced around his room. “Brendon?” There was no answer. He frowned and tried to focus back on his art at this point, but when he looked back, on top of his drawing was that makeshift dowsing pendulum. Dallon made a face, wondering what Brendon was doing. Did he not want to physically talk to him? Fine, he could play along with this game then. He picked up the wire and held it out in front of him. “Brendon?” The pencil almost immediately swung back and forth, indicating the ‘no’ answer. Thinking back to the first instance where they ‘talked’, Dallon laughed. “Okay, funny.” The pencil nub kept swinging to and from him relentlessly though. He furrowed his brow at the pencil, wondering what has Brendon so worked up.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he suddenly saw a small pile of flower petals by his drawing. Flowers? Flowers… Wait, didn't Brendon say one of his friends had a thing for flowers or something?

“...not Brendon?”

The pencil swung the opposite way, showing that Dallon was right. Not Brendon. Who was that ghost Brendon had mentioned? He tried thinking back before the name suddenly popped up in his head. “Tyler?”

All of a sudden he felt the cold seem to wrap around his wrist, the shock of it causing him to drop the pendulum.

“Yes!”

Dallon tried his best to keep his cool despite hearing the voice that was definitely not Brendon. But was instead apparently his friend. Who was in his home. “How are you- I thought Brendon said spirits were restricted to where they died-”

“Special circumstances.” Was the only answer he'd heard. “I don't have a lot of energy left so I have to be quick-uh-”

“Why didn't you just talk from the beginning then?”

“The living have to make the first contact for direct communication like this. Which-which brings me to what I need from you! A-uh-a favor, please.” Tyler spoke quickly, his voice sounding a bit nervous and unsure.

“A favor? From me?” Dallon frowned. “What can I help with?”

“Josh. I-I need you to talk to Josh. I need you to talk to him so I can talk to him. He goes to your college. He stayed on campus for the holidays, I need you to talk to him it's really important that you do because I need to talk to him and-”

“Whoa, whoa, calm down, take a breath.” Dallon laughed quietly. Yet again it dawns on him how well he's handling a conversation with a ghost. Not a normal thing, and yet, it now seems to becoming a normal thing. “Josh who?”

“Dun. He's a music major, but uh, he-I-” Tyler paused, seeming to take Dallon’s rhetorical advice. “I need you to get him to try and talk to me. I can't talk to him unless he tries to first.”

Dallon seemed to put the pieces together, figuring this Josh must be that person that Tyler was apparently leaving flowers for.

“Can you help? Please?”

“I can stop by the school tomorrow.” Dallon agreed after a minute. If he was able help Tyler get in touch with someone he cared about, why would he say no?

“Thank you so so so much, I'll be there with him when you're there so uh- oh, don't, uh, don't tell Bren about this.” Tyler spoke quickly again.

“Why?”

“He didn't want me or Gabe or anyone else talking to you because he thinks we’ll tell you about how he died and-”

“You know how he died?” Dallon raised an eyebrow, really rather curious to learn about it.

After a minute of radio silence, he hears Tyler’s voice cut in again. “Forget I said that. Uh. Please visit Josh.” And with that Dallon felt the cold leave once again.

He took some time to try and figure out what he was supposed to do. He had to find this Josh Dun and somehow convince him that ghosts exist and that he should try talking to one. Yeah. That doesn't sound crazy in the slightest. Dallon sighed, figuring he'd make heads or tails of this once he had to deal with it.   
That's a problem for future Dallon.   
Present Dallon just wants to get back to his art.

**< +><+>**

It wasn't until the following morning that Dallon had encountered Brendon again. He was getting things together to drive over to his college to meet up with Josh. Wasn't exactly sure how he was going to go about explaining to him that he needs to contact a ghost. Probably just gonna wing it and hope for the best. Dallon had felt the cold enter the room as he finished lacing up his shoes, and he glanced around.

“You're leaving again?” Dallon heard Brendon say unenthusiastically as he felt the coldness resting on his shoulder.

“I'll only be gone for a few hours.” He answered.

“Why do you have to go anywhere? You don't need to go anywhere else. We're finally talking, what else do you need?”

“I just have to stop by the college for-”

“To leave me alone for months on end again?”

“Brendon.” Dallon frowned. “I don't know what you want from me. I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life in my room so I can talk to you.”

“You're still angry with me?” His tone sounded hurt and defeated.

“No, I-” Dallon took a breath, trying to choose his words carefully so he wouldn't get him upset again. “I'm not angry. My life just doesn't revolve around you, dude. I just met you literally the other night.”

“So then you don't remember…”

“Remember what?”

“Nothing, forget it.” Brendon said quickly. “Then at least let me come with you so I know you aren't leaving me?”

“Come with me?” Dallon furrowed his brow in confusion.

“Yknow. Uh. Lemme possess you and shit and I can go with you.”

“Whoa, what?” Dallon shook his head quickly. Possession? That couldn't be safe. Or good. “No way.”

“It isn't like you wouldn't have control of yourself or shit. I'll just be sitting there in your mind with you, it's all cool.” Brendon insisted. “Then I can go with you so you won't have to leave me.”

“Bren, I really don't know about that.” Dallon admitted. The whole situation seemed to be getting sketchy to him. Talking to Brendon was one thing, but letting him _possess_ him? And besides, if he was doing something for Tyler, he was sure that Tyler wouldn't like it if Brendon tagged along, considering he wanted to be sure Dallon wouldn't tell Brendon that he visited. “I assure you, I'll be back. I'll be back by dinner time, okay?”

“Fine. Okay. Sure.” Brendon didn't sound too keen on letting him leave. “Come back soon.”

Dallon nodded, and as he went to stand up, he once again felt the cold against his lips.

His eyes could make out that figure again as he felt it.

“...I think I can see you, Brendon.”

Almost immediately he felt the cold seem to grab onto his hand. “You what?”

“There was a figure standing in front of me when you, uh..” Dallon wasn't sure whether to let him know that he seemed to understand the cold on his lips was basically Brendon trying to kiss him. “So-so unless there's something else living in my house-”

“What did you see?”

“Just a figure. Uh, I don't know.” Dallon shook his head. He couldn't make out any features, but he could at least tell how tall he seemed to be, which was shorter than himself.

“That was me. You saw me. How did-” Brendon seemed confused but interested, trying to figure out how that had happened. “Lemme try-uh, keep your eyes open.”

Dallon once again felt the cold against his lips, and heeding Brendon’s words, kept his eyes open. He slowly saw the figure seem to take shape before him again, but the cold seemed to linger there longer than previously. The longer the cold stayed, though, the more the figure seemed to start showing some features. He could make out some hair, which was dark and rather fluffy looking, and the shape of a face starting to form a bit more clearly right in front of him. The rest of the figure’s features became more visible, but the more that he saw, he felt himself getting… Tired? Maybe? That probably wasn't a good word for it. He felt as if the energy was being drained from him, and it suddenly clicked. Brendon had said that the way he could talk to him was because he was willing to share his energy with the ghost. Is that also the same as this?

As he snapped back from his thoughts, he could all of a sudden feel lips against his. It was cold still, but instead of just feeling like a cold sensation, it had a form. As his eyes focused, he could now see what seemed to be a person standing in front of him, kissing him.

Dallon hesitated for a moment. This was Brendon he was seeing. This was the ghost that had been living in his home for over thirty years. Somehow actually seeing him made the situation feel more real. Like it wasn't just his mind playing games with him. After a second Dallon carefully reached out his hand to touch his shoulder, and instead of going through like he expected would have happened with a ghost, it seemed to stay against his shoulder.

Feeling the contact made Brendon’s eyes fly open as he broke away from the kiss, his eyes wide. Even without being connected, without Brendon touching him, Dallon could still see him. “You-you can see me?”

Dallon nodded slowly, taking in his appearance now that he could, and finally comes to the conclusion that _dang_ Brendon was attractive. At least if a ghost was stalking him and trying to make out with him like this, it was an attractive one.

Dallon reached a hand out to him again, to confirm that this was all real, but Brendon took a step away. “S-sorry, I-” Brendon hesitated, his eyes staying focused on Dallon’s hand. “I'm… Not used to contact. Uh, sorry.”

Dallon nodded in understanding, bringing his hand back. This seemed to be a totally new experience for the both of them. “You're real.” He finally says, both relieved and a bit scared.

“You didn't think so?” Brendon laughed, oh wow how nice he looked when he laughed, and it seemed to put the ghost a bit more at ease. “What did you think you've been talking to?”

“I don't know, thought maybe it was just my mind playing tricks all along.” He admitted.

Brendon laughed again. “Uh, you said you had somewhere to be?”

“What, now you want me gone?” This time Dallon laughed as he saw Brendon shake his head quickly as response.

“No of course not! I just, uh, I figure Gabe might know why you can see me now, so I just figured while you're out I can go ask him about it.” Brendon said.

Dallon nodded. “Alright, yeah. As I said, I'll be back before dinner, alright? No messing up my room this time.” He smiles at Brendon as he sees his face redden in embarrassment for his previous actions.

“Right.” He answered, seeming to hesitate for a moment before taking his chances with stealing a kiss from Dallon, a bit more hesitant now that he knew that Dallon knew that's what he'd been doing.

Dallon didn't push him away, even though he now could by the looks of it. In fact, he even returned it after a second, it felt like a natural sort of response, which seemed to catch Brendon by surprise as he broke it off immediately after that. “I-I'll see you when you get back, Dal.”

And with that, Brendon seemed to just vanish, the cold leaving with him.

Dallon took a minute to gather his thoughts. Brendon’s actions confused him. Brendon seemed eager to be in constant contact with him, but whenever Dallon tried to make contact, he would shy away. It wasn't like he could ask him about it now.

It'd have to wait for when he returned from visiting Josh.

And he still had absolutely no clue how to tell him to talk to a ghost.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry shitscram  
> have some emotions  
> xoxo

Dallon made his way to the college, having no problem finding parking since the majority of the students were home for the break. The ones that stayed behind were usually due to distance or wanting to stay away from their family. Dallon would be lying if the thought of staying on campus for the holidays hadn't crossed his mind a few times. 

He headed towards the dorms, figuring that to be a good spot to start his search for Josh. Luckily for him, all of the dorms had labels on the doors of the resident’s last names, so all he had to do was find a Dun. It didn't seem to be too common of a last name, so hopefully it should be a quick find. 

It took a while of searching before he finally found the room that he was looking for.  _ Dun, Ray.  _ It was the only Dun he had seen, so it must be him. Dallon hesitated a moment before knocking. He still had absolutely no game plan going into this. He had to somehow convince this guy he's never met that someone important to him is a ghost that's been following him around, convince him to start contact with him, and all the while try not to come off as some crazy nut case. Dallon gave a quick knock before he could totally psyche himself out, not wanting to let Tyler down. 

He heard some rustling from behind the door, followed by a, “just a second!” before the door opened a bit. “Can I help ya?”

“Um, is Josh here? Are you Josh?” Dallon asked quickly. 

The other shook his head. “Nah I'm Kevin. Josh is out with Ashley right now I think. She's been totally chasing after him for weeks now.” He shrugged. “Guess she wore him down enough for a date or something.”

“Oh, uh…” Dallon hadn't expected Josh to be out. 

“Here, lemme give you his number.” Kevin fished in his pocket for his phone. “He'd probably enjoy an interruption to their date anyways.”

“Okay, thanks.” Dallon was relieved as Kevin read off the number in his phone, which Dallon copied into his own. At least this way he could think of a course of action before he would frighten Josh away with the talk of ghosts. Dallon thanked him and Kevin closed the door to return to whatever it was he was doing before. 

As Dallon turned and went to go send a text to Josh, he felt a cold permeate through the dorm hallway, which then settled on his hand. “A  _ date _ ?” Dallon could recognize Tyler’s voice, which seemed to sound rather confused, and maybe a little heartbroken. “Seriously?  _ Seriously?  _ Dallon, please, you gotta go save him.”

“Save him?” What was wrong with Josh being on a date with someone?

“Believe me, he does  _ not  _ want to be there right now.” Tyler said. “Ashley's a nice girl, but he  _ definitely  _ isn't into her.”

“What makes you say that?” So Dallon was curious. So what? He felt that if he was being some sort of ‘link between the worlds’ for Tyler and Josh, he should know maybe a little more about everything. That was only fair right?

“Because he only wants to be with me. Even if I am…” Tyler’s voice trailed off, but Dallon was able to complete that sentence for himself. 

“Alright. I'll see what I can do.” Dallon responded as he opened up a new message to think of what to say to Josh. 

“Thanks, Dal. I can see why Bren really likes you so much.”

Dallon smiled a bit and went to go type up a message. 

_ Hey I know you don't know me, my name’s Dallon, but I need to talk to you in person about something if that's cool? It's kinda important.  _

Dallon hit send, figuring that sounded safe and vague enough to receive a response. The message read as ‘delivered’ and Dallon shoved his phone back in his pocket, deciding to head to his own dorm room as he waited for an answer, instead of just standing out in the hall. “Now we wait.”

“I don't want to wait.” Tyler’s voice followed Dallon as he headed towards his room, the cold still situated on his hand. “I need to talk to Josh.”

Dallon nodded, taking out his phone again and deciding to send another message for a sense of urgency. 

_ It's about Tyler.  _

**< +><+>**

Dallon and Tyler went to Dallon’s dorm, which was thankfully empty. It wasn't like Dallon didn't like his roommate, he and Gerard actually got along pretty well, but he was pretty sure that having to explain why he was talking to nothing would throw him off. Or maybe not. Gerard was always a bit out there anyway. He’s the type of guy who would probably accept some weird explanation no matter how strange it seemed. 

It was only about five minutes before Dallon’s phone chimed with a message, and Tyler quickly ushered him to open it up. 

_ tyler?? how do u know tyler?? what do u need to talk about?? _

“Tell him that I need to talk to him.” Tyler instructs, which just brings a frown to Dallon’s face. 

“Somehow I don't think ‘Tyler is a ghost and he needs you to contact him’ is gonna fly.”

“Just do it, okay?” Tyler insisted. 

Dallon sighed but did as told.  _ I know it sounds really freaking weird but trust me on this. Tyler's a ghost and he wants me to tell you to talk to him.  _

Almost an immediate response. 

_ what???? _

Dallon let out another sigh, fearing that Tyler’s ‘advice’ just made this much more difficult to accomplish. As he was thinking of what to say, another message popped up.

_ u can talk to ty? how _

“Told you it'd work.” Tyler’s voice held a tone of relief though, which showed that maybe he was doubting his own advice as well.

_ Is there somewhere we can meet up? If you aren't busy. Your roommate said you were on a date. _

_ oh god no not a date hahaha hals just wanted to grab some coffee _

_ Sounds like a date to me.  _

_ well it wasnt so. i can meet u in the library in like 5 mins? _

_ Yeah that's cool I'll see you then.  _

“Knew it wasn't a date.” Tyler said.

**< +><+>**

The human and the ghost made their way down to the library, which proved to be almost completely empty due to the holidays. The only people there were the librarian and maybe about two or three students seeming to do makeup work to pass the semester. It wasn't hard to find an area to themselves where Dallon would be able to talk to Josh, and Tyler, without attracting too much attention, among a small cluster of chairs and a table between them. 

As they waited for Josh to show up, Dallon couldn't help but be curious as to why it was so important that Tyler had to talk to Josh. Tyler had seemed to say that they were together before his death, which would make sense as to why he wanted to talk to him again, but what was with the urgency? “I know Brendon doesn't want me to ask about his death, but…” Dallon felt the cold again as he started talking, meaning Tyler was listening. “What about you? Is that-”

“It was an accident. Wrong place wrong time kinda thing.” Tyler answered. He didn't seem to want to share more, but continued nonetheless. “We'd, uh, Josh and I that is, we'd gotten into an argument about something. I don't even remember what, it was dumb and I overreacted.” He sighed. “I ran off, and that was the last Josh saw of me.”

Dallon couldn't help but wonder what that meant. Did he kill himself? Or was it something else? He wanted to ask, but before he could, Tyler cut in. “I see Josh.”

Dallon glanced around, his eyes fixating on the person who just walked in. “Is that him?”

“Yeah.”

Dallon stood up to go introduce himself. Josh looked like the kind of guy that would be interested in music. Admittedly he was kind of intimidating to look at, despite Dallon easily towering over him, but considering his laid-back texting style and the fact he was important to Tyler, he couldn't be all that scary. 

“Hey, Josh, right?”

Josh looked in his direction and gave a wave as he walked over. “Yeah you must be Dallon?”

Dallon nodded and shook his hand before they went off to that secluded area of the library again, and he could almost feel Tyler pulling at his hand to hurry up.  


They sat in awkward silence for a few moments, neither of them knowing how to start conversation. “So, uh..” Josh finally said, looking away from his shoes he'd been staring at to meet Dallon’s gaze. “You said there was something about Ty?”

“Yeah.” Dallon thought about how to approach the subject. 

“Stop dallying, Dal!” He heard Tyler’s voice huff impatiently. 

“Right.” He mumbled to himself as he grabbed the makeshift pendulum from his pocket. 

“What's that?” Josh asked, looking at the contraption oddly. 

“Alright so, uh, Tyler’s a ghost and to be able to talk to a ghost, the living person has to make the first line of communication.” Dallon started, handing the wire to Josh. “I think it's something like you have to actually believe that there's a ghost here and even if you think you think it, sometimes you just need like… proof? I guess?” He really had no idea what he was talking about. But when Tyler had attempted to contact him, despite knowing that he wasn't alone and it wasn't Brendon, he needed to say his name to ‘make it real’. Like he'd held some sort of doubt that it was Tyler there. 

“Uh…huh…” Josh wasn't following at all. 

“Right so, uh, that's a dowsing pendulum. It's a really basic way to start conversation, I guess. The thing will swing different ways for yes or no questions.” Dallon tried to explain. 

“Okay, look.” Josh sighed, setting the pendulum down on his lap and looking at Dallon. “This better not be some kind of joke that K-Ray put you up to to try and get out why I've been keeping to myself.” Josh looked back at the pendulum. “I want Tyler to be here. But-but…” His voice trails off, and it's obvious to Dallon that he's trying to hold back memories of Tyler. 

“Hey, it's no joke, it's okay.” Dallon insisted, not wanting to ruin his chance of getting the two to talk. “It doesn't make sense. I know. Ghosts  _ shouldn't  _ be real, but they are. Somehow. I didn't even know until the other day when my friends and I were just joking around with a ouija board and found there was actually a ghost in my house.”

“Those things aren't real. It was probably just one of your friends playing a joke-”

“That's what I thought. But they weren't. The next day I made that thing to see if Brendon really was real, and after I came to accept it, he could actually talk to me.” Dallon said. “I couldn't see him, but I could talk to him, and that was proof enough that he existed, yknow?”

“I dunno. This is just kinda…”

“Weird, yeah I know.” Dallon sighed in agreement. He wasn't too sure where to go from here, before remembering something that Brendon had mentioned. “Ghosts can sometimes have enough energy to make stuff appear. Haven't you gotten flowers without knowing who they were from?”

“I-” Josh looked back to Dallon, squinting his eyes at him in confusion. “How do you know that?”

“Tyler told me.” He figured that was an easier answer than explaining entirely how he started talking to Brendon. 

“And how can you talk to him? He never mentioned knowing a Dallon. How would you have ‘made the first contact’ or whatever?” Josh asked, still not totally buying the whole thing. 

“Brendon, that ghost that's been in my home, told me about him, and later that day there was a ghost that wasn't Brendon that had visited. He'd only told me about two other ghosts he knew, so I figured..” Dallon shrugged. “And it was Tyler. He wanted me to tell you to get to talk to him. I guess it was easier for him to get to me than to you because I already accepted that there were ghosts around.”

Josh held the wire out in front of him unsurely. “Tyler… Wants to talk to me?” He sounded almost amazed. Dallon figured that must've had to do something with the last conversation the two must have had. 

“It's all he's been talking about since we made contact.” Dallon assured him with a smile, glad that he seemed to be giving this a chance. 

“Did-uh…” Josh looked away from the pencil and back to Dallon. “Did he sound angry?”

“Not in the slightest.” He answered quickly. “He just seemed to be totally desperate to talk to you.”

“I'm not  _ desperate. _ ” Tyler cut in. “I just-uh…”

Dallon laughed a bit at Tyler’s words and ushered for Josh to give it a shot. 

Josh focused back on the pendulum in front of him, taking a deep breath before speaking. “T-tyler…? Are you… Are you really here?” Almost immediately the pencil swung left to right. 

“That means a yes, by the way.” Dallon mentioned before shutting up again so Josh could focus. 

“Ty-I…” Josh's voice seemed to break a bit. “I'm so s-sorry. We-I-I shouldn't have fought with you but I did and now you're dead and-” Josh seemed to take a moment to compose himself again before continuing. “Are you… Are you angry with me?” The pencil swung to and from him, which he easily figured meant a ‘no’. “Why? Why wouldn't you be angry with me? I would be angry with me. I  _ am _ angry with me.” Josh's voice wavered again. “I-I miss you, Ty… It-it's only been two years, to the date, even, but it feels like it's been ages.”

Dallon suddenly understood why Tyler was rushing him to try and get in contact with Josh. The anniversary of his death. 

“I r-really miss you… Please be here… Don't-don't let this be some cruel joke…”

“Josh, I'm right here.” Dallon heard Tyler speak, and at his words, Josh quickly looked around before looking down at his hand, where Dallon was sure he probably felt the cold like he did. 

“Ty…?” Josh’s voice seemed small, his eyes wide. “Tyler, you-you're-”

“I've missed you too, Jish.” And with that, Dallon felt the cold leave his own hand, which he could only guess went to Josh as well. 

“Tyler-I- _oh god_ , it's you.” 

Dallon noticed the tears start falling from his eyes, and he took that as his cue to leave them be. He smiled and got up to head to a different section of the library to allow the two to talk. 

**< +><+>**

Dallon had busied himself with some book he'd grabbed off the shelf. He wasn't really reading it, honestly. More interested in other things. He was glad that he could help Tyler and Josh reunite. The two obviously seemed to really like each other. 

He can't help but wonder where that leaves him and Brendon though. For some reason Brendon likes him, but what does he feel about the ghost? Dallon furrowed his brow in thought. He did like him. To what extent, he wasn't too sure yet. Probably to any other person, a ghost that has been watching them for what Dallon could only assume must've been his whole life would be weird. It still was weird to him. But it was also sort of… flattering? Brendon knows what he was like growing up, and what he would do while he thought no one was watching, and what he did with his friends, all that sort of stuff, and he still seemed to really like him. Dallon still isn't sure why Brendon thinks he's important, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't at least a bit interested in the ghost. 

Dallon was interrupted from his train of thought when he saw someone come to approach him from behind the book he wasn't really reading. 

“Thank you, Dallon. I don't know how to thank you enough.”

Dallon set the book down and gave a smile to Josh. “Hey, just doing what a ghost asked me to do. No big deal.”

Josh smiled back at him and handed him back the pendulum he had him use. “Really, I have no idea how to repay you. I can talk to Ty again and to know he isn't mad at me for what happened, it-it really helps.”

Dallon’s curiosity was eating him alive about what could have happened between the two of them that eventually led to Tyler’s death, but he didn't want to pry. After all, he doesn't want to bring back bad memories now that Josh seems overjoyed to be able to talk to Tyler again. 

“If you need anything at all or whatever just shoot me a text.” Josh gave him a grin before hesitating for a moment and giving him a quick hug. “Thanks, really. From both of us.”

Dallon returned the hug, wondering why Tyler wasn't saying thank you himself, but maybe he just wants to spend the rest of his energy on Josh, he guessed. 

With that, the two, three, of them said their goodbyes and Dallon found himself rather eager to go back home to see his own ghost again. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hap new year!  
> new year means a new direction!  
> so from here on out expect things to maybe not be quite as fluffy as it has been
> 
> u didnt see those tags up there change right  
> :^)

Dallon returned back to his home roughly an hour before he was supposed to be back for dinner, and when he went back to his room, thankfully this time it wasn't a huge wreck like it had been the last time he left. He found Brendon sitting on his bed, which threw Dallon off for a moment due to the fact he could still see him. 

“Told you I'd be back.” Dallon greeted as he sat beside him on the bed. 

Brendon didn't answer, looking to be lost in his thoughts or something. 

“Did you get to talk to your friend Gabe?” Dallon prompted, wondering if he was told bad news about this situation. 

“Yeah, apparently it's fine.” Brendon started, finally making eye contact with him. “It has to do with sharing energy and it being a more direct route or something like that. He said that way provides more energy for me in the living world or something.” Brendon shrugged before glancing away again. 

“Hey, is something wrong?” Dallon frowned, reaching a hand out to Brendon, only to have him recoil away. “Are you hurt?” Do ghosts even get hurt? 

“No, um…” Brendon looked down at his lap, looking like he was thinking something over. “Maybe? It was in the past so…” He seemed to be mumbling that to himself, as if he was the one that needed convincing that he wasn't hurt. 

“Bren?” This ghost was really confusing. Then again, so was the other ghost he'd met. Is it just a ghost thing to be confusing and cryptic around the living?

“Dallon do you like me?” He suddenly asks, turning his attention back to the taller one. 

“I-”

“It's yes or no, Dal.” Brendon cut him off before he could finish. “Do you like me?”

Dallon gave it a moment of thought. Like is different than love. He could like someone he's only known a few days. And Brendon didn't ask if he  _ loved  _ him. Dallon wasn't sure if he'd even ever been in love before, honestly. He isn't even sure what being in love is supposed to feel like. “Yeah I do.” Dallon gave him a smile for reassurance. 

Brendon looked away, seeming to be fighting with himself for a moment before leaning up and giving him a small kiss. “O-okay. Th-thanks.”

“Is everything alright?” Dallon asked again. Even for the strange ghost, this seemed to be rather abnormal behavior. 

“I just, uh-I need to trust you.” Brendon mumbled mostly to himself as he allowed himself to lean against Dallon’s side. “I  _ do  _ trust you, but…”

Dallon frowned and went to go put an arm around his shoulders, which caused him to flinch at the contact, but at least this time he didn't move away. 

“Sorry, uh…” Brendon seemed to be finding what words to use. “It's just an instinct. From my past. Before I was a ghost. Sorry.”

“I'm not gonna hurt you, Bren.” Dallon assured him, wondering if someone had wronged him in his past to cause him to act like this. “It's alright.”

Brendon seemed to sigh in relief and leaned against him a bit more, closing his eyes and resting his head on Dallon's shoulder. “Thank you.”

The two stayed quiet for a few minutes before Brendon sat back up and looked at Dallon, seeming to be thinking something over. Before Dallon could question him, Brendon suddenly blurts, “I was killed by someone I was in love with.”

“What?” Dallon’s look of confusion turned into one of sympathy, bringing his other arm around him too to keep him close, which caused another flinch from the ghost. “I'm so sorry, Bren.”

Brendon shakes his head and allows himself to lean against the hug, his face buried against Dallon’s chest. “It's okay. Because you're here and I'm here and things will be different now. It's a second chance and this time it'll work out and nobody's gonna die.”

Dallon sighed quietly, gently rubbing the ghost’s back. That would explain the flinches away whenever Dallon would try to touch him. If he said he loved him, and someone he loved was the one that had killed him, it'd only make sense. “Is it, uh, is it okay if I ask what happened?”

Brendon looked up at him from his secure spot against his chest, frowning for a moment. “I'm…”

“It's okay.” Dallon said quickly. “I'm not forcing you to tell me or anything.”

Brendon shook his head and sat back up once more, looking down at himself in thought before he sighed quietly. “No, you deserve to know.” 

Brendon closed his eyes tight as he grabbed the bottom hem of his shirt, lifting it up to reveal his chest. Right in the middle, a bit to his left, there was nothing but a huge gaping hole that Dallon could see right through. Dallon looked at it in wonder, and maybe with a bit of discomfort. The space looked big enough for someone to stick their arm through. It didn't exactly look like a clean-cut either. Rather jagged looking, more than a little scarred looking too, right where his heart should be. 

“It-it isn't pretty is it?” Brendon finally opened his eyes again as he looked down at his chest too, wincing at the sight of it. “You could see how I wouldn't survive that.” Brendon laughed quietly, but it definitely sounded broken and not genuine in the slightest. 

“What-”

“I was with this guy for years.” Brendon started, situating his shirt back on so Dallon wouldn't have to keep looking. “Like, inseparable. Did everything and anything together. We, uh, we definitely loved each other.” He seemed to hesitate, unsure if he wanted to continue. Before Dallon could tell him he didn't need to explain, he continued anyway. “One day he says to me, ‘Brendon, do you really love me?’ And I say that I do, more than anything or anyone.” Brendon glanced down, hesitating again. “He said he wasn't sure if I was being honest. I assured him that I was. I told him I would do anything for him.” The ghost sighed, taking a minute to gather his thoughts back. Dallon didn't pressure him to continue, knowing that it must be hard to force himself to remember all of that. “He, um… He said, ‘really? Anything?’ And I repeated what I'd told him. Any-Anything.” Brendon's voice seemed to crack at the last word, and Dallon’s arms flung back around him again. 

“Bren-”

“S-sorry Dallon I-” Brendon buried his face against his chest once again, his arms wrapping him in a hug as well. 

“You don't have to share if you don't want to.” Dallon assured him. 

“I-I just-I just don't want you t-to  _ hate  _ me.” He mumbled against his chest, shaking a bit. “Just-just let me know you won't hate me, please, Dal. Don't hate me…”

“Brendon-”

“Please don't-don't think of me differently than you do now. Don't hate me, Dal, don't-please-”

Dallon was quick in his actions, not letting himself think before he lifted Brendon’s head from his chest and gave him a kiss. Brendon seemed to get less tense, almost instantly seeming to melt against him. Dallon held him close as the ghost seemed to be clinging to him almost desperately. 

Dallon broke it off after a moment, feeling himself get a bit weaker at what seemed to only be described as the transference of his energy to Brendon. “Brendon, I don't hate you. I won't hate you, it's okay.”

Brendon looked at him in almost amazement, mouth hanging agape a bit. 

“I promise.” Dallon tacked on after a moment. 

The ghost seemed to hesitate about continuing again but did nonetheless, speaking in a rush. “He-he told me that he wanted to be sure I'd never love anyone else and that I'd never even think about being with anyone else and that I only belonged to him and we were meant to be together and that we were  _ soul mates  _ and-and then h-he pinned me down and he took-he took out a knife and-and-” Brendon looked away from Dallon, seeming to catch his breath. “I-he… I woke up with Gabe standing over me, welcoming me to the other side.” Brendon kept looking away, biting his lip for a moment before continuing once more. “When I had made my way back to the living world after a while, I'd found out that he had gone to jail for killing me. The house was abandoned, but-but there was a paper. It was like he'd  _ known  _ I'd somehow be back. It was sitting on the bedside table.” Brendon glanced to a corner of Dallon’s room, seeming to be remembering where it happened. “It-it had said what he'd done. He ripped out my heart and-” Brendon hesitated, refusing to look at Dallon as he spoke. “And-and that he'd  _ eaten  _ it. It said that by doing that, we-we would be bound together. Life, death, whatever. That we would only be able to love each other in any future life.” Brendon made it a point to still keep looking away from Dallon. “He… He died in jail twenty years ago.” Before Dallon could make the inference for himself, Brendon adds, “And fate is fucked up and didn't keep his soul dead like mine.”

Dallon took a minute to take everything in, trying to make sense of everything he'd said. “So, in my previous life, I killed you?”

Brendon nodded slowly, still not wanting to meet his gaze. 

“And that's why you love me? Because some paper told you that you had to?”

“No, I-”

“Brendon.” Dallon cut him off. “If someone killed you, you shouldn't be in love with them.”

Brendon didn't speak for a few minutes, but Dallon felt him shaking a bit. “You… You hate me.”

“I don't-”

“Don’t lie to me!” Brendon pushed himself away from Dallon. He shook his head as he stood up from the bed, still rather shaky. “I-I shouldn't have told you, I-”

And with that, Brendon suddenly vanished. 

Before Dallon could allow himself to think about the situation, he heard his mother call him down for dinner. 

**< +>**

Dallon didn't talk much during their meal, nor did he really eat much, just sort of shoving the food around on his plate with his fork. He assured his parents that he was okay, just feeling kind of sick, and he excused himself from the table to retreat back to his room. 

As he figured, there was no sign of Brendon. 

Dallon sighed as he went to go lay down on his bed to try and sort through everything that Brendon had told him. 

In his previous life. 

He was in love with Brendon. 

And killed him. 

By  _ eating his heart _ . 

Dallon was still totally freaked out by that fact alone. It was gross. Just wrong. But what might be even more wrong is that Brendon still loves him. How could Brendon possibly justify being in love with the person that killed him in such a cruel way? Even if it was supposed to be some magical whatever and he's not allowed to love anyone else, why would he still want to? He wouldn't just stay in the land of the dead? It just doesn't make any sense to Dallon. But at the same time it does. If this really was true, it could explain why Dallon hasn't been in love with anyone before, been in a relationship with anyone. If he was forced to only love Brendon. But does he even love Brendon? He doesn't know what he feels about the ghost. What he definitely doesn't feel is hate. He doesn't hate him. The whole situation is really freakin’ weird, and it makes him kind of uncomfortable, but he doesn't think he could even hate Brendon. After all, it isn't Brendon’s fault that it happened. 

**< +>**

About twenty minutes later, Dallon found himself starting to drift off to sleep, but was interrupted by hearing Brendon. 

“Are you still angry?”

“I was never angry.” Dallon explained, shifting over on his bed so Brendon could lay down if he wanted. “It's just… A lot to take in.”

Brendon seemed to accept his offer, taking the space beside Dallon and laying beside him, burying his face against Dallon’s chest for comfort. “I'm sorry.” He mumbled.

“I just…” Dallon thought about his words. “I don't want you to say you love me just because you're ‘destined to’ or whatever.” Especially since it seems like whoever Brendon was with when he was alive sounded like a manipulative dick. 

“I  _ do  _ love you, though.” Brendon said quietly, keeping close to Dallon’s chest. “Not just ‘cause of some dumb magic shit. You might have the same soul as him, but you're different.” Brendon paused for a moment. “A better different.”

Dallon found himself smiling at that. 

“You're… You're more kind.” Brendon nuzzled against him as Dallon wrapped an arm around him. “You don't stay angry with me. You-you don't  _ hurt _ me.”

“Bren, forgive me for saying this but that guy sounded like a total piece of crap.”

Brendon laughed a bit quietly. “You weren't the first to tell me that.” He sighed. “Gabe said the same thing when I told him about it. He didn't want me to go visit him when he was still alive.” 

“Did you visit?”

Brendon shook his head. “No, I-I knew Gabe was right.” He paused again. “He was even hesitant for me to visit  _ you _ because you're supposed to be the same person or whatever. But, as I said, you're definitely different and-and I'm happy about that.”

Dallon kissed the top of Brendon’s head and rubbed his back, a bit more at ease himself now that it seems Brendon is making his own decision about this. 

“I'm…” Brendon looked up at Dallon from his chest. “I'm not forcing you to love me if you don't but-”

“I like you, Bren.” Dallon cut him off. “I don't think love can happen in just a day, but I can make my own choice if I love you or not.” Dallon smiled and gave him a light kiss. He was definitely on track toward loving him. Whether it be from that magic he did in his past life or just from Brendon being Brendon, he was feeling something for the ghost. 

He felt Brendon smile against his lips. “Thank you, Dal.”

Their moment was cut off by Dallon’s phone buzzing with a call. “Sorry.” Dallon mumbled quietly, turning over to grab his phone from off the charger to answer it. The caller ID showed it was Josh. What was he calling for at this time? It's rather late… “Hello?”

“Dallon? You're the one that visited Josh earlier right?”

The voice on the other line was not Josh’s, but instead his roommate Kevin’s. 

“Uh, yeah? Can I help you?” Dallon was thrown off by it not being Josh. 

“Have you seen him around? After he came back from visiting you or whatev, he came back here to eat then he left and hasn't come back and he left his phone here, and he like, never leaves without his phone.”

“No, uh, I haven't seen him since I saw him earlier.” Dallon started to get a bad feeling for some reason. There shouldn't be anything wrong right? Josh could go out and do what he wants when he wants. But at hearing Kevin, Dallon couldn't help but get a bad feeling in his gut, and it seemed like Kevin was feeling the same. 

“Shit. Um. I might be overreacting or whatever but like, he's been really acting off all day and I'm worried about him. Do you might searching around for him? Or asking around?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Thanks.” Kevin definitely sounded worried on the other line. “I'm-I'm gonna call Ashley and we're gonna search around campus. It's a big place so, maybe you wanna check around the area?”

“I can do that, I'll call up some of my friends if I need help.”

“Thanks again. As I said I'm probably just overreacting but-”

“No I get it, I'll text Josh's phone if anything comes up.”

And with that, Dallon hung up, sitting back up straight and earning a look of confusion from the ghost. 

“What's going on?”

“Someone I know is missing.” Dallon wavered a moment before risking asking a question. “I know this probably sounds strange, but uh, do you mind maybe tracking down Tyler?”

Brendon’s face twisted with even more confusion, before managing to connect something. “Josh. That's the guy that Tyler always goes on about…”

“Yeah uh…” Dallon hesitated again before continuing, knowing Josh’s safety is more important than keeping a secret. “Tyler came to me to ask for help contacting Josh.”

“Tyler contacted you?” Brendon asked in disbelief. 

“Yeah, the details aren't that important right now.” Dallon waved his hand to dismiss that issue. “Just-can you find him and ask if he knows where Josh is?”

“He always knows where he is.” Brendon sat up too and nodded. “I’ll help.” The ghost leaned up and gave Dallon a kiss before vanishing right before his eyes. 

Dallon sighed quietly, taking a moment for himself before texting his friend’s group chat, which Ryan was recently added to. 

_ Hey can I ask you guys a favor? _

Dallon shouldn't be so worried about someone he'd just met, but he couldn't help but think the worst for some reason, negativity tugging at the back of his mind. 

There shouldn't be a reason to worry. Tyler should be with him. 

Right?   



	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as much as i dont want to give away spoilers uh  
> trigger warning this chapter for self-harm and suicide  
> o o p s?

“Wait so who's Josh?” 

Dallon sighed as he was forced to explain for the third time that night why this was important. “He's a guy I know from school, and his roommate and I think that he's gone missing.” He explained as Kenny shuffled into the backseat of Dallon’s car beside Ryan. 

“I've seen him around.” Spencer added, turning from his spot in the passenger’s seat to address the other two. “We had a few classes together. He seemed to keep to himself a lot though.”

“Hey if it gets me out of the house tonight I'm game for anything.” Ryan shrugged as Dallon drove off towards the campus. 

“How do you know he isn't just out for a walk or something? He could be perfectly fine.” Kenny asked. 

Dallon shook his head in response. “I don't know. Something just seems off to me. It's the two year anniversary of his boyfriend's death, and his roommate said he's been acting strange.” Dallon knew that Josh and Tyler were reunited again, so he shouldn't be upset by his death still since they can talk any time they want. But the whole situation just sat wrong with Dallon.

“Do you think he killed himself?” Kenny asked with a shudder. 

“That seems extreme…” Spencer commented, although his tone was leaning more towards agreeing with what Kenny had said. 

Dallon tuned out their chatting as he drove, trying not to focus on their negativity. He only knew Josh for a few hours, but he seemed happy to be reunited with Tyler. He wouldn't go and kill himself. 

**< +><+>**

As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw Kevin and a girl, who he assumed must be Ashley, waiting there for them. 

“We checked both the dorms, and no one has seen him.” Kevin said as the four got out of Dallon’s car. 

“And he never said anything about going back home when we hung out earlier. It'd be a long drive for him anyway, he wouldn't leave stuff in his dorm if he was going back home.” Ashley added, voice dripping with worry. 

“We’ll find him.” Dallon assured her, seeing how distressed she was. “We can split up and cover more ground.”

“Splitting up never works in horror movies…” Kenny mumbled, earning a look from Dallon that basically transmitted as ‘take this seriously’, so Kenny shut up after that. 

“Hals and I can do another once over of the dorms. Knock on some doors and see if anyone has seen anything.” Kevin offered. 

“Kenny and I can go check out the grounds around here.” Spencer chimed in, and Kenny nodded, secretly relieved that he wouldn't have to go off on his own. 

“You and I can go venture off around the town?” Ryan suggested to Dallon. “I'm sure he'd probably stay within the area of the school so there shouldn't be too much ground to cover.”

“That sounds fine by me.” Dallon answered. 

The group of them all exchanged numbers so they could call if they found anything, and the three duos set off to their planned locations in hopes of finding Josh. 

**< +><+>**

They'd been searching for nearly a half hour at this point, with no luck whatsoever. They didn't see him in the local twenty-four hour cafe, or in the small park. There was really nothing else that would be open this late, despite it being a college town. A lot of places were still on vacation for the holidays, so it left their options limited. 

“You know, there is one place we haven't checked.” Ryan said, nodding his head off in a direction behind Dallon. 

Dallon turned and followed his gaze. “...a graveyard?”

“You said it was his boyfriend’s death anniversary. He could be at his grave.” Ryan suggested. Dallon sighed, not liking how cliché this was turning to be, but he supposed there wasn't much else of a choice. 

**< +><+>**

The graveyard looked as abandoned as any graveyard should. It was dark, so both Dallon and Ryan took out their phones to use as flashlights to navigate around safely. Didn't want to go tripping on headstones. 

“Dal!”

Dallon turned towards the familiar voice as he felt someone grab his hand. “Brendon? What're you-”

“Gabe and I found Tyler.”

“Uh.” 

Dallon turned to Ryan, glanced to Brendon, then back to Ryan. “...you can see him?”

“Did you say  _ Brendon _ ? As in-”

“He can see me?” The ghost held Dallon’s hand a bit tighter, keeping close to him unsurely. 

“Yeah.” Dallon admitted to Ryan. “As-as in the ghost from the other day.”

Ryan stared at Brendon in almost disbelief, frowning. “ _ Riiiiight _ …”

Hearing Ryan mumble something about it being a bad idea to have smoked before coming along, Dallon sighed and shook his head, turning his attention back to Brendon. “You said you found Tyler?”

Brendon tore his attention away from Ryan and nodded. “Yeah, we actually found him here. Um…” Brendon rocked on his heels a bit unsurely as he looked back to Ryan. “Maybe you should, uh, tell your friend to go home?”

“What? Why should I?” Ryan made a face and shook his head.

“It's, um…” Brendon wavered, looking to Dallon to back him up. “He probably shouldn't be here.”

“Like hell I’m going anywhere.” Ryan huffed. “If you've got something to say to Dallon you can say it to me. You two wouldn't have even met if it weren't for me.”

Brendon narrowed his eyes at Ryan, not liking his tone. 

“And there is  _ obviously  _ something going on between you two.” Ryan motioned to their hands, which were still wrapped together. 

“Uh-” Dallon went to shake the ghost’s hand off, but Brendon held tightly. 

“Oh my god. Did you guys fuck? Is that why you didn't want us to spend another night?” Ryan's eyes grew wide as he looked to Dallon, but before Dallon could retort Brendon cut in. 

“Maybe we did, maybe we didn't. What's it to you?” Brendon shifted closer to Dallon so they were shoulder to shoulder, or rather as shoulder to shoulder as they could be with a height difference. 

“Bren-”

“Oh my  _ god _ !” Ryan erupted in laughter. “I helped you score!”

“Wha-”

“You shouldn't be here.” Brendon spoke at Ryan again. 

“It's all the more reason for me to be here! So you guys don't end up screwing each other in a fucking graveyard!”

“Okay, stop it.” Dallon frowned. “We're here to look for Josh. Can we  _ try _ staying on topic?” He gave up trying to convince Ryan that they really haven't done anything together. He knows he can't win. 

Ryan had to hold back laughter, but he waved his hand to let the two of them continue what they were saying. 

“Right, uh.” Brendon took a minute to focus back on the situation. “Gabe is with him right now, but he refuses to talk. They're over at Tyler’s grave where, um.” Brendon wavered again before turning his attention back to Ryan. “Are you sure you want to be here?”

“Fucking of course.” Ryan answered, over his laughing fit and ready to take things a bit more seriously. “Can you try to, I dunno, fill me in a bit first?”

“Tyler was Josh’s boyfriend. There was an accident of some sort and Tyler died. And is now a ghost.” Dallon briefly explained. 

“The veil here is really thin right now, so when we get to Tyler’s grave, you might be able to see Tyler and Gabe, which will uh, make things easier probably.” Brendon explained. 

“Lead the way?” Dallon asked, wondering why it seemed that Brendon was stalling.

“I just, um, it-” Brendon sighed. “I want to warn you that you might not want to look.”

“At Tyler?” 

“At the whole thing, honestly.” Brendon admitted. 

“Stop being so cryptic and just lead us over.” Ryan demanded.

Dallon quietly agreed with Ryan. The sooner they can talk to Tyler the sooner they can figure out what happened to Josh. 

“Right…” Brendon sighed again, figuring that Ryan wasn't going to be taking his chance to leave. “This way.” Brendon gave Dallon’s hand a tight squeeze before letting it go and motioning for the two of them to follow him. 

**< +><+>**

It seemed like a much longer walk than it was, no one really saying anything. Dallon shot Ryan some glances as they walked, and it was obvious that Ryan had a bad feeling in his gut about this too. In the slight distance, Dallon saw someone tall, roughly his height maybe, standing by a grave, and someone shorter, maybe closer to Ryan's height, standing beside him. Well, maybe standing wasn't quite the right word. The shorter of the two was leaning against the taller, looking like he was having trouble standing on his own. 

“Is he talking at all?” Brendon called out as he rushed towards the two, earning a shake of the head from the taller. 

“Been cryin’ non-stop though.” He said with a sigh. 

Dallon and Ryan made their way towards them, and the taller turned to face them. 

“Neither of you should be here.” He said with a frown. “This is a bit much for the living.”

“I can handle-” Ryan stopped talking as he joined the others, and Dallon saw him staring down at the ground in front of him. 

Against his better judgement, Dallon went to them as well, nearly feeling sick at the sight that had caught Ryan. 

Looking down, he saw Josh, laying in a pool of his own blood. There were cuts and slashes all over any visible part of him, the blood still steadily pouring out, but with how much blood was already around him, he probably didn't have much left.

Dallon quickly moved his phone away so the light wouldn't be shining in the situation, not trusting himself to look again. “I-is…”

“He's been dead for probably a half hour now.” The taller answered for him. 

“How-” Ryan couldn't form the rest of the sentence, the look on his face definitely making it clear that he wished he had listened to Brendon. 

“Tyler isn't talking.” Brendon frowned, motioning to the shorter of the two other ghosts.

“Tyler?” Dallon asked cautiously, reaching a hand out to the ghost’s shoulder. 

At the contact, Tyler released his grip on the other, Gabe, Dallon assumed, and clung onto Dallon’s arm tightly. “I-I-Josh-” Tyler babbled between his weeping, not saying anything coherent. 

Dallon moved his free arm to rub Tyler’s back, trying to calm him down a bit. Which, given the situation, he could imagine it would be practically impossible.

“What happened to him?” Ryan asked, looking to Gabe. “How did he-”

“That's what we're trying to find out. All I know is Tyler was with him.” Gabe sighed again, looking back down at Josh. 

“Tyler, what happened after you guys left the library?” Dallon asked, trying to keep his voice calm. He wanted to freak out and maybe scream at the situation before him, but finding out what happened was more important.

“We-I-” Tyler shook his head, clinging tighter to Dallon’s arm. 

“We aren't making any progress here.” Gabe kept frowning. “We should move to another area-”

“No!” Tyler shrieked, turning his gaze to Gabe. “I'm not leaving Jish!”

“Ty, listen.” Gabe tried to keep his tone steady. “If we stay here, you won't say anything. We need to remove you from the situation. His physical body is gone, it isn't coming back.” Dallon felt Tyler cringe and cling even tighter to him. “So if you tell us what happened, we can see how he ended up.”

“You're being kinda harsh, Gabe..” Brendon mumbled quietly, just earning a shrug from the one in question. 

“I may be rude but I'm the truth.” Gabe said nonchalantly. 

Dallon looked over to Ryan. “Can you, uh, call the guys and let them know we found him?” He thought for a moment before continuing. “And you should probably call the police or an ambulance or something too. I'm gonna figure out what happened.”

Ryan nodded and held tightly to his phone as he started to quickly text the others to tell them. 

Dallon paid his focus on the trio of ghosts, seeing Gabe wave his hand for them to follow off to an area where they wouldn't be bothered by the others once they arrived. With Dallon and Brendon supporting Tyler, the three of them followed after Gabe, Tyler still weeping loudly. 

**< +><+>**

The four of them found a spot by a mausoleum, sequestered away far enough from Josh for Tyler to start to calm down, although he was still definitely shaking. Once he had quieted down more, Dallon posed the question to him again. 

“What did the two of you do after we parted ways at the library?”

“I…” Tyler took a shaky breath, leaning heavily against Dallon as he stared down at the ground. “You left us after we re-reunited and-and… I was running low on energy. After everything that happened th-throughout the day, I-I would have had to leave him…” Tyler shook his head, trying to stay focused on explaining what had happened. “So-so… He offered his energy to me by-by letting himself be a host f-for me.”

“You possessed him?” Gabe asked. 

“He… He had said it was okay…” Tyler tried to defend himself. 

“I know you're new to the whole ghost thing compared to me and Brendon but possessing people you care about is proooobably one of the worst things you could do.” Gabe said. Dallon noticed Brendon look at him in surprise, as if this was news to him too. Dallon was suddenly relieved that he hadn't agreed to let Brendon possess him earlier. “Alright, listen up.” Gabe cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together, clearly getting ready to explain something. “Whether or not you let the host be in control, you're still there influencing them. Which means that you're still playing a part in their actions and their emotions. So while you  _ thought  _ that you would just be able to chill out with Mr. Boyfriend, you were  _ actually  _ fuckin’ around with his entire being. Exciting, right?” Gabe raised an eyebrow at Tyler, who gave him a vague look of confusion. 

“Alright lemme dumb it down a bit more.” Gabe started. “Ghosts are generally made up of negative energy. Even if you've got a ghost as cheerful as me-” Gabe threw on a big grin for emphasis, “We are beings of dark magic, and dark and negativity are more or less the same thing. It's just the energy that we carry. So, by you entering Josh for energy, whatever energy you already had was being  _ shared  _ with him. Negative energy. You followin’?” Tyler stared at him blankly, and Brendon glanced over at Dallon who upon meeting his gaze, Dallon could tell that he was also glad that he had refused Brendon’s request to let him possess him. 

“All your negativity impacted him, his emotions, and he went off and did this, right?” Gabe asked, prompting some sort of response from Tyler. 

“He…” Tyler furrowed his brow and looked down again. “After we left the library, he-he stopped back at his dorm for some dinner before he headed out again. When… When I asked him where we were going, all he had said was ‘I love you, Ty’.” Tyler leaned more against Dallon, who put an arm around his shoulders for support so he wouldn't end up falling over. “We went out here, and I thought we were just going to be visiting my grave. I-I mean, it made sense right? To visit me on the anniversary of my death?” Tyler looked at Gabe, then Dallon as if he was seeking reassurance. Dallon nodded for him to continue. “He…” Tyler looked down once more. “He took out a knife. He must've grabbed it during dinner and-and kept it with him. I asked-I asked him what he was doing, and again he said that he loved me. He then… He…” Tyler bit his lip, shaking again. “He dragged it a-across his skin… So-so many times… I-I was freaking out. I was asking him what-what he was doing. He said-he said ‘I love you, Tyler and’” Tyler choked back a sob as he continued. “‘And I don't ever want to leave you.’ I asked him what he meant. How-how was he gonna leave me if I was r-right there right?” Tyler started crying once more. “He said that-that he still blamed himself for my death and that-and that it was only fair for-for both of us to be dead…” 

Dallon rubbed his back, letting him take his time to keep going. “How would he have blamed himself?”

“After-after we had fought, I had run off, like I told you.” Tyler said, oddly seeming a bit more calm with talking about his own death than about Josh’s. “I wasn't sure where I was going, just ran off to go blow off some steam, whatever. All of a sudden I was approached by this guy who was demanding me to give him all the money I had.” Tyler gave a vague shrug. “I had left all my things at Josh’s home, so I had nothing to give. The guy didn't believe me and pulled a gun on me.” Tyler motioned to the side of his head, where Dallon had just now noticed a bullet-sized hole right above his left ear. It was too dark to tell, but Dallon assumed it looked the same on the right side as well. 

“But that isn't Josh’s fault. Unless he was the mugger.” Brendon frowned. 

“That's-that's what I told him. But he said… He had said that if he hadn't started that fight with me I never would have run off and I wouldn't have been shot.” Tyler said, glancing to Brendon before resuming looking at the ground. “And-and he kept dragging the knife across himself, and so-so I tried to take over to get him to stop. But when I tried, I-I ended up getting pushed out of him and I couldn't get back in because-because he was al-already-” Tyler erupted into tears again, burying his face against Dallon’s shoulder. 

Dallon looked over at Brendon, then to Gabe, figuring he would know more about his question. “If Josh is dead, shouldn't he be a ghost like you guys?”

Gabe stretched out his arms and cracked his knuckles, over exaggerating the fact he was going to explain something again. “Death is fucked up. It's totally unpredictable. Some of us wake up as ghosts, some of us wake up as new people, and some of us… Well, just don't wake up.” Gabe started. Tyler's head shot up as he was listening to Gabe. “I like to call that place the Abyss. Original right? Came up with that one on my own.” Gabe grinned, but seeing that no one else seemed to be in a joking mood, he kept going. “Basically, when you die, your soul can do one of three things. If it wants to have another go at life, it'll be reborn. If it thinks it has had it's fill of fun, it turns out like us. But if it isn't sure, it sits out in the Abyss until it decides what it wants to do. That can take minutes, years, centuries, so on and so on.”

“So Josh…”

“His soul wasn't sure what it wanted. You would know if he became a ghost or if he was reborn. You were close enough to him for you to have that sixth sense about that type of thing like Brendinger here was about this guy.” Gabe motioned towards Dallon. 

“How do I find him?” Tyler asked, feeling hopeful for the first time since he saw what Josh was doing. 

“You don't.”

Hopefulness totally shot down, Dallon noticed, seeing Tyler’s body language suggest more of being hopeless. 

“The soul decides what it wants to do. It might take into consideration what happened during it's human life, and it might not. Souls aren't always reflective of the personality of the living, proof being Dallon. Souls are like, I dunno.” Gabe shrugged. “They're still a mystery to me and I've been around them for decades.”

“There has to be a way to bring him back.” Brendon prompted, not wanting to see Tyler give up. 

“You just have to wait. Hopefully his ties to you are strong enough to leave an imprint on his soul so it will choose to be like you.” Gabe said, trying to sound as supportive as he could in this situation. 

Tyler resumed looking down for a minute. “I-I'm heading back.” And with that, Tyler vanished without a trace. 

Gabe sighed and waved at Dallon and Brendon. “I'll go check on him. Nice to meet you, Dal.” He gave a grin as he too vanished right before them. 

Dallon let out a deep sigh, leaning against the side of the mausoleum. 

“At least we know what happened now.” Brendon said, leaning beside him and gently holding onto his hand. 

“Doesn't make the situation any better.” Dallon frowned, looking at the ghost. “Josh is still dead, and there are people who are gonna be distraught about that.”

Brendon gave him a sympathetic smile. “You really care about others, don't you?”

Dallon raised an eyebrow in confusion at him, wondering what that had to do with anything. 

“I'm glad that your soul decided to get reborn instead of immediately turning into a ghost like me. You're so much nicer than he was.” Brendon leaned up and gave him a kiss, squeezing his hand tightly. 

“Flattery will get you everywhere, Bren.” Dallon smiled against his lips and he gave him a kiss this time. Brendon freed his hand from Dallon's and brought his arms around Dallon’s neck to keep him close as he kissed him in return. Dallon's arms found a natural place around Brendon’s waist as the shorter of the two shoved his tongue through his own, then Dallon’s lips, to meet Dallon’s. Dallon wrapped his arms a bit tighter around him at that, keeping Brendon close against him for a few moments before he ended up breaking it off, laughing a bit. 

“What-what's so funny?” Brendon frowned, face getting a bit red in embarrassment, thinking that Dallon was laughing at him. 

“Making out with a ghost in a graveyard. Could we get any more cliché?”

“Shut up.” Brendon kissed him again, the two staying mingled together until Dallon had to pull away again, this time so he could catch his breath. 

“You know how inappropriate this is right? I mean, Josh is dead.”

“He’ll be fine.” Brendon said quickly, wanting to keep kissing Dallon. “I have a feeling we’ll see him again soon. He and Ty were close, it won't be long before his soul decides to stay with him.” Brendon leans up to keep kissing him but is met by Dallon’s chin instead. 

“Hey, let me breathe a bit mmm?” Dallon laughed a bit, having tilted his head up so Brendon would stop. 

“You living people and your breathing.” Brendon scoffed, deciding to kiss at Dallon’s neck to keep himself occupied. 

It took Dallon longer than it probably should have to disconnect himself from Brendon to get him to stop kissing at him, frowning a bit at how there were probably now marks on his neck left by the ghost. Dallon tried fixing the collar of his shirt to hide the small marks. “Can we wait until there isn't a decaying body a couple yards away before you keep doing that?” Dallon raised an eyebrow at him, and Brendon frowned in defeat. 

“Fine.” Brendon moved his hands to shift Dallon’s collar back to where it was before. 

“Bren-”

“I didn't like Tyler hangin’ on you earlier.” Brendon mumbled quietly, patting down his collar as an emphasis to keep it in place. 

“You were jealous of a heartbroken ghost?” Dallon raised an eyebrow in amusement, earning a shove of annoyance from Brendon. 

“Don't you have a decaying body to attend to now?” Brendon huffed, not liking being called out on his jealousy. 

“Right…” Dallon sighed, glancing off in the direction they had come from. He wasn't looking forward to it. 

“I'll meet you back at your home when you get back, Dal.” Brendon gave him a wave before he ended up vanishing like the other two had before him. 

Dallon started making his way back towards Ryan, hoping that by the time he made it back that he would know what to do about this situation. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> u all thought this was gonna be a happy fluffy fic didn't u  
> u have been tricked!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 100 kudos r u serious???? thank u so much ohmygod????  
> i didnt think people actually enjoyed this u guys have no idea what this means to me i mean WOW.....???  
> so i'll be nice and reward u with some not-so-totally heartwretching stuff this time around thank u for ur continued support whao

By the time it took to convince Ryan that he and Brendon had in fact not gone off to screw each other on someone's grave, the marks Brendon had made on his neck not helping his case at all, the others had joined them in the graveyard as they waited for police officers to show up and figure out what they could do. Ashley was a mess once she had seen the sight, and Kevin had to usher her away to keep her from getting sick. Kenny wasn't fairing much better, and after a while of waiting around he went to go join Ashley and Kevin to get away. 

“Shit, man…” Spencer sighed, looking uncomfortable just standing around a dead body. “This fuckin’ sucks.”

“Right?” Ryan agreed, not sure what else there was to say about the situation. 

Dallon felt the need to stay quiet and still refused to look down at Josh’s body. He would go back to Tyler, right? Tyler really cared about him, so Josh’s soul should realize that and decide to end its cycle of life to stay with Tyler. But as Gabe had said, death is unpredictable. For Tyler’s sake, he really hoped Josh would return to him. 

**< +><+>**

It wasn't too long of a wait before the authorities showed up and cleared the six of them out, sending them on their way home after Ryan and Dallon had told them that they had just happened to find him like this. They figured it would be a good idea to leave out the part about the ghosts. 

The six of them piled into Dallon’s car, and he brought them all to his home since Ashley insisted that she didn't want to be alone after all of this. Everyone had agreed with her, feeling a bit more at ease with the situation as a group. 

After a quick lie to his parents, ‘we're getting a head start on studies!’, they filed on into the basement and they sat around, no one really deciding to say anything. Dallon caught Ryan stealing glances at him, and he had a feeling that he was overly curious about the details of Josh’s death. Everyone else had seemed to chalk it up to suicide, being distressed about the anniversary of Tyler’s death, but Ryan knew there had to be more going on here, and Dallon could tell that by just looking at him. 

“Hey Dallon, why don't you show me where you keep the snacks?” Ryan prompted. Dallon hesitated a moment but nodded, ushering for Ryan to follow him up the stairs to the abandoned kitchen. 

**< +><+>**

As soon as they were alone, Ryan bombarded him with questions. “Did Tyler end up telling you? Did he say what happened? Is Josh a ghost now?”

Dallon tried his best to recount what he had heard and seen, rummaging around in the pantry for some various chips so they wouldn't come down empty handed. 

“So Tyler is- oh.” Dallon turned towards Brendon’s voice when he heard it, and he saw the ghost eying his friend with disdain. “You're still here.”

“Is that a problem?” Ryan asked defensively. 

Dallon sighed, really not wanting to have the jealous ghost end up picking a fight with anyone who spoke to him. “What were you saying?”

Brendon kept an eye on Ryan for a moment before turning his attention back to Dallon. “Tyler has calmed down a bit. Gabe is keeping checks on him so he doesn't do anything dumb. Not like he can kill himself if he's already dead but.” Brendon shrugged. “He told Tyler to keep focusing on Josh and he'll end up knowing if he wakes up or something.”

Dallon nodded a bit in relief, glad that Tyler seemed to be coping relatively alright considering what had happened. 

“Can I talk to you, though?” Brendon shot a glance to Ryan again, adding “alone?” To the end. 

Ryan put up his hands defensively. “Alright I'll let you two lovers have some peace and quiet.”

Dallon laughed a bit awkwardly, handing the bags of snacks to Ryan. “Tell them I'm grabbing some salsa for the chips. I'll be down in a few.”

Ryan nodded and made his way back to the basement, and Dallon looked back to Brendon. 

The ghost grabbed his hand and had him follow him up the stairs to Dallon’s room, where the two sat on his bed in quiet for a few moments. 

“Dallon, I…” Brendon started, frowning a bit. “I'm sorry for having suggested possessing you earlier. If I had known, I mean, that's fucked up.”

“Good thing I refused then.” Dallon laughed quietly to try and set Brendon a bit more at ease, having a feeling the news of what could happen with a possession had gotten to him. 

“I could've hurt you, though.” Brendon leaned against Dallon’s shoulder. 

“But you didn't. I'm still here.”

Brendon frowned, shaking his head. “And-and that's a problem, isn't it?”

Dallon raised an eyebrow in confusion, wondering what Brendon had meant. 

“Dallon, you're alive and I'm not. It isn't like you can tell everyone that your boyfriend is a ghost.”

Dallon’s other eyebrow raised to meet his other. “ _ Boyfriend? _ ”

“Well, uh-” Brendon’s head shot up from his shoulder quickly. “We-we are together aren't we? I mean-”

“Yeah.” Dallon smiled at him and kissed him lightly. “We are.”

“R-right…” Brendon let out a sigh. “Good.”

“But what's the problem with it?” Dallon asked as Brendon rested against his shoulder again. 

“Well, I mean… You should have someone who is living. Someone who ages with you and breathes like you and, I dunno, a living person being with a dead person is pretty fucked up isn't it?”

“It isn't like I'm making out with a decayed corpse or a skeleton or something.” Dallon laughed at Brendon’s worries. 

“Yeah but-”

“Bren, don't worry about it. As I said I can make my own choices here.” Dallon reassured him. “If my thoughts about you change, I'll be sure to let you know.”

He heard Brendon sigh again, apparently deciding to leave it at that. 

Dallon wrapped his arm around Brendon's waist to keep him close, kissing the top of his head lightly. He breathed in, not really have thought about his scent. But now that he does, he has a hard time placing it. It's almost as if he didn't have any. But he could faintly smell something. Maybe, it was faint, but it smelled like ashes. Not the kind of ashes that fall from a cigarette. More like the kind that have been left over from a burned out campfire. It wasn't totally repulsive though, Dallon finding an odd comfort in the subtle aroma. 

Actually, it was more like an odd comfort in Brendon as a whole. Even though he was cold to the touch, it didn't even seem to register to Dallon unless he thought about it. The way they seemed to fit together, the way that Brendon looked at him, the way they could have simple kisses or ones like in the graveyard. It all felt… natural. As if they were meant to be like this. Maybe Brendon wasn't lying about that whole ‘soul mates’ thing. 

“My thoughts about you have changed.” Dallon announces suddenly. 

Brendon lifted his head in confusion, unsure what he had meant by that. 

Dallon keeps his arm tight around his waist, keeping him close as his other hand meets with Brendon’s, fingers twisting together. 

“I-I think I love you, Bren.” Dallon feels his heart do flips in his chest as he says that. 

“You…”

“I love you.” Dallon says with a bit more assurance this time, squeezing his hand tightly. 

“I love you too.” Brendon answers, grinning widely at him. “If I was living, or had a heart, it'd be going crazy. I love you too, Dal.” 

“I think mine is enough for both of us.” Dallon laughs again, moving their hands against his chest for proof. “I love you.”

Brendon laughs too, moving their hands away and deciding to rest his head against Dallon’s chest to listen to his heart beat quicker whenever he says it. “Thank you.”

Dallon smiled and let Brendon rest there, nuzzling his face against the ghost’s hair again and taking in his subtle scent. “Why are you thanking me?”

Brendon squeezed his hand tightly. “It means a lot to hear it coming from you, okay?” The ghost closed his eyes as he continued listening to his heart. “S-say it again.”

“I love you, Brendon.” Dallon mumbles against his head, feeling a bit more comfortable saying it now. “I love you.”

Brendon tilts his head up to look at Dallon, giving him the brightest smile that he had ever seen on the ghost. Seeing his smile makes Dallon return it, followed by another kiss. Dallon feels Brendon release his grip on his hand and also feels him shift over onto his lap, facing him and putting his hands against Dallon’s shoulders as he leans into the kiss. Dallon’s arms wrap tightly around Brendon’s waist to keep him there, his heart racing a bit faster as he realizes what could be following this. 

At feeling Dallon’s heart rate pick up, Brendon grins against his lips before continuing to kiss him, easily making his tongue meet Dallon’s. 

But all too soon, they hear Dallon's phone chime with a message, which he realized was the tone for their group chat. As he went to break free of the kiss to check the message, Brendon’s hand moves nearly lightning quick to grab Dallon’s wrist tightly, pinning it to the bed before he could grab his phone from his pocket. “It can wait can't it?” Brendon asks softly, moving to kiss at his neck. “I'm here, focus on  _ me _ , Dal.” 

Dallon went to retort but his argument was cut short by Brendon biting down, rather hard, on one of the light marks he had made on his neck earlier that night, eliciting a quiet moan from him instead of what he wanted to say. The ghost grins again at the sound he caused to come from Dallon, kissing it lightly for a moment again before biting down once more, grinding his hips against Dallon’s in the process so he could get another sound from him. Which seems to work just fine, Dallon’s mind definitely not interested in some text message right now. Brendon’s efforts are rewarded by another moan like he was hoping for, and Brendon moves his hands to the collar of Dallon’s shirt, working to unbutton his shirt. The ghost was thankful Dallon had decided to wear something that would be easy to remove. 

Dallon made no effort whatsoever to stop Brendon, and now that his hand was free once more it returned to Brendon's waist, holding him close almost desperately. 

Once Brendon had managed to unbutton all the buttons of his shirt, he starts moving his kisses and bites towards his collarbone, nearly making Dallon whack his head against the wall as his head tilts back to give Brendon easier access, with another wonderful sound escaping his lips. His hands rest against Dallon’s shoulders again, the cold finally hitting him and causing a delightful shiver down his spine. 

As Brendon continues his efforts slowly down Dallon’s chest, Dallon’s hands move down a bit, his thumbs hooking under Brendon’s shirt to lift that off of him. At the motion though, Brendon freezes in his actions, and Dallon feels him start shaking slightly. Dallon's eyes flutter open in a bit of worry, wondering if he was doing something wrong. 

“L-leave it on…” Brendon says a bit shakily, leaning back up straight. “I don't… I don't want you to h-have to look…” Brendon glances down at his clothed chest, still shaking a bit himself. 

Dallon’s hands reach out to Brendon’s shoulders, pulling him back close against him. “Brendon, I love you. All of you. It doesn't bother me.”

“But…” Brendon hesitates, although allowing himself to relax in Dallon’s embrace. 

“It's you, Bren. I want to see you.” He says, kissing his forehead. “It doesn't bother me.”

Brendon settles down some more at Dallon’s words, tilting his head up to give Dallon a kiss as thanks, before sitting back up straight. The ghost hesitates for a moment before lifting his arms up, allowing Dallon to continue what he was doing. 

Dallon’s hands return to Brendon’s shirt, carefully and slowly lifting it up over his head and arms before tossing it aside, one arm moving to wrap around his waist again, the other situating on his back, right beside the obvious hole in his chest. He pushes him against his chest again, kissing his head. “I love you. It's part of you and I love you.” Dallon keeps his hand from coming in contact with the wound though, feeling that Brendon wouldn't be comfortable at all with that. 

“I love you so much, Dal…” Brendon nuzzles his head against his chest in affection, taking in this moment, before grinning up at Dallon. “So, where were we?” He asks, immediately going back to grinding against him to get things back on track. The sound Dallon makes gives him the cue to keep going as they were, the trail of marks moving down further. 

Dallon’s grip on him loosens, enough to allow him to move a bit more freely. The ghost’s hands slowly move off his shoulders, trailing their way down his chest as well, causing another shiver of pleasure within Dallon, before they stop at his pants, starting to fiddle around with getting his belt undone. 

Dallon’s heart races faster, initially getting a bit embarrassed, but then he remembers that Brendon has been here when he didn't even know. He's probably seen it all already. 

As the belt finally gets undone, and Brendon starts on the button of Dallon’s now too-tight jeans, they hear a bit of… laughter?

Dallon’s attention immediately turns to the noise, seeing Ryan standing in the entrance to his room, raising an amused eyebrow at the situation before him. 

“Guess you didn't find the salsa?”

Dallon’s face turns bright red as the embarrassment hits him, and he feels Brendon flinch, his hands jolting away to find where Dallon tossed his shirt to. 

“I shoulda figured leaving you guys alone…” Ryan’s snark trails off as he lays eyes on Brendon, specially the very thing that the ghost was so worried about even Dallon seeing. “Is that-”

Brendon finally finds his shirt and shoves it on quickly, not wanting Ryan to end up seeing, but at turning and seeing where his eyes were, he knew it was too late. “I…” He hops back onto the bed, close beside Dallon as if he was trying to hide behind him. 

“How'd you get-”

“Ryan can you, uh, give us a minute?” Dallon cuts him off, surprised though that Brendon didn't decide to just vanish at seeing Ryan. “I'll join you guys in a few just uh, please.” Dallon gave him a hard look, and Ryan put up his hands in surrender. 

“Alright, yeah, sorry for barging in on you and the heartless ghost gettin’ it on.” At Ryan’s words, Dallon feels Brendon cringe against his back, which makes Dallon start getting rather angry towards the intruder. 

“Ryan…” He warns, “Now.”

Ryan keeps his hands up as he turns heel, walking out of the doorway and closing the door behind him. 

Dallon sighs quietly as he turns his attention back to Brendon. “Bren-”

“Th-this was a bad idea. We shouldn't have-”

“Brendon.” Dallon grabs his shoulders to make him focus. “It's okay.”

“How-what-” Brendon stumbles over his words, looking down at his once again covered chest. “He… He said I was heartless…”

“Ryan’s being an ass.” Dallon says. The usage of a swear coming from the other’s mouth causes Brendon to back at him quickly, knowing that Dallon wasn't really one to swear. “Don't pay any attention to him.” Dallon holds him close, rubbing his back gently but being mindful of what he was so sensitive about. 

“It-it's disgusting though, isn't it?” Brendon asks quietly, leaning against Dallon’s chest heavily. “A huge fucking hole right where my heart should be… It's like something out of a fucking horror movie. Sh-shit, how can you love someone who-who doesn't even have a fucking heart to love back with?”

“And yet you say that you love me, don't you?” Dallon kisses his head again. “If you don't have a physical heart but still love me, I think it's safe to say that love doesn't come from a heart. I love you. Truly. It doesn't matter to me that you have a hole in your chest. You're still Brendon, you dummy.” He holds him tight to his chest. “And who cares what anyone else thinks, right? What's the worst they can do to you? Kill you?”

Brendon laughs a bit quietly at Dallon’s words, nuzzling against his chest once more before deciding to go back to listening to his heart beat.

“Sorry for killing the mood.” Brendon says after a minute. 

“Don't worry about it, Bren.” Dallon answers, moving his hands to run through the ghost’s hair. His mood had substantially subsided due to the turn in events, but he wasn't going to complain. Brendon’s emotions were much more important than ‘getting it on’. “There will always be other times.”

Brendon looks back up at him, smiling a bit slyly. “Hopefully sooner rather than later.” 

Dallon smiles back, giving him a kiss. “I hear ya.” 

The two stayed close for a moment longer before Brendon pulled away. “You should get back to your friends.”

Dallon nodded quietly as Brendon busied himself with refastening Dallon’s belt and shirt buttons, taking his time with it though so he can savor more of their time together. 

After he had finished, Brendon gave him one more kiss before vanishing, letting him get back to the others. Dallon let out a bit of a shaky sigh, not having realized how much he wished they could have continued. But as he said, there will be more chances. His heart flutters a bit at that thought, and he wills himself to stand back up to join the others back in the basement, without the promised salsa. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow ryan way to be a cockblock smh


	7. Chapter 7

As late as it was at this point, no one could bring themselves to fall asleep. Even after Dallon threw on Netflix, specifically of Good Eats which was always calming enough to put him to sleep. None of them felt like sleeping, but they really weren't up for conversation either. Small talk here and there, but nothing that lasted. 

“Okay look.” Ryan started after the third episode started up. “We all know what happened is shit. It fuckin’ sucks. But do you think Josh would want you to keep grieving so much?”

“You guys barely knew him.” Ashley said quietly, wiping at her eyes yet again. They were red and puffy which showed Dallon that she had likely been crying on and off since they had found out the news. “I think it'd be fucking normal for us to grieve. What if you lost your goddamned boyfriend over there?” Ashley gestures towards Spencer, which made Ryan burst into laughter.

“Spencer is  _ so  _ not my boyfriend.” He said, laughing a bit too much. 

“Could've fooled me.” Dallon chimed in, trying to help lighten the mood a bit. 

Ryan gave him a look before quietly clearing his throat and subtly motioning to Dallon’s neck. Dallon’s face flushed a bit, rather regretting having let Brendon mark him up so much. It was hard to hide it all beneath his collar. He tried to adjust it without drawing attention to himself.

“Well at least if Spencer was my boyfriend, I wouldn't be making out with him in my bedroom when company was over.” Ryan remarked, causing all eyes to land on Dallon at his words. 

“What?” Kenny asked, completely lost by what Ryan had meant. 

“He was just jok-”

“Why don't you want to show off your boyfriend to everyone?” Ryan cut off, seeming to enjoy the power he held over Dallon right now. 

“ _ You  _ got a boyfriend?” Spencer asked in disbelief. 

“I-”

“I mean he's here still, isn't he?” Ryan cut him off again, forcing Dallon into the spotlight. 

“Tell him he can join us.” Ashley insisted. “The more people here the safer I’d feel.”

“But-” Dallon hesitated, shooting a look at Ryan who shrugged innocently in return. 

“Yeah, Dal, introduce us!” Kenny said, maybe a bit too enthusiastic about this. 

“Seems like you guys were busy.” Kevin laughs a bit, motioning towards the still visible marks on Dallon’s neck, which just made his face turn more red at it being pointed out. 

Dallon gave another look to Ryan, who frowned at him in return. “C’mon, man. Get their minds off of Josh. I don't like seeing everyone so gloomy, yknow?” He says to him quietly, which just earns a sigh from Dallon. Ryan had a point. As rude as he was for going about it. It was the first time they were having conversation that wasn't about how sad it was that Josh had died. If being the center of attention for a little while was all it took to help, he couldn't exactly force them to keep being sad. If he could help get their minds off of it, then he supposed he'll have to take on that responsibility. 

“I'll-I'll see if he wants to meet you guys.” Dallon sighs again, standing up to head up the stairs so Brendon wouldn't just appear before them. What was he getting himself into now?

**< +><+>**

As Dallon made it back to the kitchen, it didn't take long for Brendon to show up on his own. 

“Is everything okay?” Brendon asked a bit worriedly, not liking the look on Dallon’s face. 

“They… Want to meet you.” Dallon looks at Brendon apologetically as he went to explain. “Ryan said it could help them take their minds off of Josh.”

“Do they know that I'm dead?” Brendon asks bluntly. “Because if they don't, introducing me as Brendon might confuse those other friends who were there when we first met.”

“I'll, uh, just tell them it's a strange coincidence.” Dallon said. 

“Bet you're regretting calling a ghost your boyfriend.” Brendon laughs dryly, shaking his head. “I'll go meet them.”

“I don't regret you as my boyfriend.” Dallon assures him. “I just think the whole ghost thing is too much for them to handle right now.” He admits. They'll probably start asking if Josh would be a ghost and he somehow felt he wasn't supposed to be sharing this information with others whenever he wanted. 

“If that Ryan guy tries anything funny, I'm out.” Brendon warned, grabbing Dallon’s hand tightly. “I don't like him.”

“I think he means well. He just acts without thinking of consequences, I've noticed.” Dallon insisted, lacing their fingers together. Even though he was more than a little unhappy with Ryan at the moment, it wasn't that he hated him. He meant well in the end. He just wants to help them get their mind off a bad situation and he and Brendon were probably still fresh in his mind as a distraction. 

Dallon pulled gently on Brendon’s hand to lead him down to the basement to his friends, hoping that he was good at winging things. 

**< +><+>**

“This is Bren.” Dallon introduces him by his nickname, hoping Kenny and Spencer won't realize. Spencer gives him an odd look for a moment, but seems to accept it and not ask any questions about his name. 

Brendon gives a wave around the room, his other hand still tight around Dallon’s as Dallon introduced the others to him. Based on how tight his grasp was, Dallon could tell that the ghost was more than a little nervous at meeting Dallon’s friends. He could understand. After all, even being seen by other people probably wasn't the most comfortable thing to him either. 

“How'd you end up meeting? Just the other day Dallon was complaining about being single-”

“I wasn't  _ complaining _ .” Dallon cut Kenny off quickly. “We, uh.” He looked at Brendon for a moment, trying to think of something on the fly. 

“We had some classes together last semester and I ran into him earlier and we got to talking.” Brendon said casually. It was vague enough to be plausible. The college had many students, so he easily would be able to pull off being a student there. “One thing led to another and now-” Brendon shrugged, raising their hands up to finish his thought. 

Dallon gave Brendon a look, not being the biggest fan of public affection like this. But he was impressed with how quickly Brendon managed to come up with that story. And the fact he was even talking to the others. 

“That's really nice. I'm happy for you guys.” Ashley says, giving a smile to them. Dallon returned it, glad that them being a distraction seemed to be working. 

Everyone seemed to settle down again after that, the gloomy mood a little less somber with the addition of Brendon. Slowly everyone started drifting off to sleep around the basement, huddled up on couches and chairs. 

“Don't you guys try anything while we're all getting some sleep.” Ryan mumbled tiredly as he pulled a blanket around himself, specifically the one that Spencer was using just so he could piss him off. 

“We're not that dumb.” Brendon insisted, nonetheless nuzzling against Dallon’s shoulder affectionately. 

“Mmmhm..” Ryan doubted, it not taking long for him to follow suit of everyone else. 

“We should be getting some rest too.” Dallon says quietly to Brendon, grabbing one of the spare blankets off the back of the couch they were on to drape over themselves. He knew Brendon probably didn't need it, being a ghost and all, it wasn't like he could get cold. 

“I… Don't really sleep.” Brendon answers, nuzzling against his shoulder once more. “But you go ahead. I'm fine just being close to you while you sleep.”

Dallon never really considered the fact that the dead had no need for sleep. But it makes sense, anyway. No need for sleep when you're already in eternal slumber, he supposed. 

“Alright…” Dallon lightly kisses Brendon’s head, laying down as much as he can without disturbing Kevin who fell asleep on the other end of the couch. Brendon adjusts as well, snuggling close between him and the back of the couch. Dallon uses one arm to hold him close around his waist as he feels him rest his head against his chest. 

“Sleep well, Dal. Love you.”

Dallon's other hand moves to absentmindedly tangle his fingers through Brendon’s hair as he closes his eyes. “I love you too, Brendon.”

**< +><+>**

Dallon ended up being the first to wake up, shivering a bit from spending the night cuddled up against the ice cold ghost. Sunlight was shining through the small windows of the basement, so Dallon could only assume it was some time in the morning. The light wasn't doing much help warming him up though, Brendon still pressed close against him. 

“Sleep well?” He heard the ghost ask him quietly, kissing his cheek. 

“Mmm..” Dallon shivered again but still nodded. “Jus’ a little chilly.”

“Shit, that's me, I'm sorry.” Brendon said hurriedly, maneuvering to make sure Dallon was able to put the blanket between himself and the ghost to block the cold. As much as he wanted Brendon against him, he appreciated this and the warmth from the blanket. 

“No worries.” Dallon insisted, snuggling against the warm blanket tiredly as he vaguely felt Brendon’s cold arms through the blanket clinging onto him. “You can't help it.”

Brendon gives him a light kiss before resting his head against Dallon’s chest. “Let me know if it's too cold.”

Dallon nods and gives him another kiss as well, and he can feel the ghost smile against his lips. 

It wasn't much longer before everyone else started waking up as well, Spencer complaining loudly about Ryan stealing his blanket and the two of them wrestling over it. 

“You  _ sure  _ he's not your boyfriend?” Ashley teased at seeing how the two were acting. “Because you're doing a shitty job of hiding it.”

At her words, Spencer chucked a throw pillow in her direction and the three of them started arguing together, although laughing about it so Dallon wasn't worried about it being taken seriously. He was just glad that compared to last night, the mood definitely seemed to be a bit happier. 

It didn't take long before everyone was involved in their argument, the stray pillows and blankets being thrown about dragging everyone else in. As Brendon went to go pelt a pillow at Ryan, he ended up bumping into Kevin as he dodged one coming his way. 

“Holy hell man, you're freezing, are you okay?” Kevin asks. 

Brendon hesitates, and Dallon feels himself hold his breath for a moment. 

“Yeah I'm good.” Brendon says after a moment, a smirk coming across his face. “The cold never bothered me anyway.”

“Dallon, your boyfriend just made a Frozen reference and if you don't dump his ass right now I'm leaving.” Spencer announced as he held a pillow against Kenny’s face, who in turn kept smacking him with one repeatedly to get him to stop. 

Brendon changes his target and instead pelts the pillow at Spencer, which made him release his attack on Kenny. Being free, Kenny quickly seeks shelter on the other side of Brendon, thanking him for saving him. Dallon smiles at Brendon, relieved that the ghost and his friends seem to be getting along so well. He could have imagined this to turn out horribly, yet somehow they're all here laughing and fooling around as if Brendon was easily accepted as their friend too, despite not being quite alive. They didn't need to know that, Dallon figured. 

After their commotion died down a bit, everyone agreed that they should probably be getting back home/to their dorm rooms. They all piled into Dallon's car again, Brendon saying he was going to stay behind because there wouldn't be enough room in Dallon’s car for him too. Dallon nodded, knowing that he probably wasn't sure if he'd be able to leave the house, so his decision made sense. 

**< +><+>**

It took about thirty minutes before Dallon finally returned back home, and he made his way back to the basement to clean up their mess. His parents had left earlier that morning for work and even though they wouldn't be back until around dinner time, he wanted to get the cleaning out of the way so he wouldn't forget about it. 

“Your friends are nice.” Brendon says as he helps Dallon fold up the blankets. 

“You think so?” Dallon smiles again, relieved that he thinks that. Brendon nodded and draped the blanket over the couch as Dallon continued. “I'm glad you guys got along. I was a bit nervous about Ryan having me introduce you, but it worked out in the end.”

Brendon smiled and leaned up to give Dallon a kiss. “Don't suppose you'll ever tell them that you're in love with a dead person?”

Dallon hesitates. “I don't know. If I ever do end up telling them, it wouldn't be now. Not when Josh is still on everyone’s minds, yknow?”

Brendon nods in understanding, giving him another kiss before they sit on the couch beside each other. “I'm-I'm just glad that you  _ do  _ love me.” The ghost mumbles quietly, leaning against him. “So much stuff happened yesterday.”

“Yeah.” Dallon agreed, his arm moving around Brendon’s shoulders. He was always cold to the touch, but Dallon was growing more tolerant of it as he got used to it. Brendon relaxes against his touch, staying quiet for a minute longer before speaking up. 

“Hey, Dal…”

“Mmm?”

“We don't have any interruptions right now.”

“Oh?” Dallon raised an eyebrow as he looked at Brendon, meeting his gaze. 

Brendon grins widely at him as he leans to wrap his arms around Dallon’s neck, pushing him down against the couch as he finds his way on top of him, kissing him hard. Dallon made no attempt whatsoever at stopping him, eagerly returning the kiss as his arms draped down to Brendon’s waist, pressing their hips together. 

The ghost’s hands move to tangle in Dallon’s hair, pulling at it slightly as he pushes his tongue through Dallon’s lips. Brendon’s actions earn a moan against his mouth, which makes Brendon pull away for a moment. “Mmm? You like that, Dally?” He asks as he pulls on his hair again, receiving the same sound he made before as well as Dallon bucking his hips up involuntarily. Brendon smirks before giving him another kiss, moving his head to his ear and nibbling on the bottom of it. “You like being roughed up, Dally?” He whispers against his ear, giving his hair another tug. 

“Br-Bren-” Dallon is cut off by another moan escaping his lips, knowing he had no chance of denying what Brendon said was true. Brendon moves his hands to quickly discard Dallon of his shirt, going right for those marks he left on his lower collarbone and nipping at that next, his cold hands gripping at Dallon’s shoulders. Another sound of pleasure comes from Dallon before he tries fumbling around with Brendon’s shirt to lift it off of him. He notices the ghost’s slight hesitation again, but he allows Dallon to remove it. 

“I love you, Bren.” Dallon reassures him so he wouldn't worry about Dallon being freaked out by his chest again. 

That seems to be all the reassurance that Brendon needed, quickly working his way down Dallon’s chest to get to where they were before they were interrupted last night. It doesn't take long to strip Dallon of his belt, followed by quickly unbuttoning his jeans and pulling them, and his boxers, down to reveal what he was going for all along. Dallon’s breath hitches as he feels Brendon slowly drag a cold finger across the length, who then glances at Dallon with a bit of a smirk. 

“Y'know, Dal…” Brendon starts, giving the tip a lick and watching for his reaction. Dallon opens an eye to look at Brendon but closes it again as the wave of pleasure rushes through him. “There are some perks to being a ghost, I think.” Brendon starts at the base and slowly licks back up to the tip again, which produces another dirty sound from Dallon. “Can you think of any?”

At hearing Brendon seem to be asking for some sort of answer, Dallon opens his eyes a bit, half-lidded, as he looks down at the ghost. His mind didn't quite register the question. “I…” Dallon’s mouth hung open a bit, trying to focus on what Brendon was said.

“I know one off hand.” Brendon prompts, licking the length of it another time. Dallon makes another sound, still trying to stay focused on Brendon though. Brendon's eyes flash back up to Dallon’s mischievously, the smirk returning to his face. His hands move to keep Dallon’s hips still. 

“Ghosts don't have to breathe.” And with that, in one go he takes all of Dallon’s length into his mouth. Dallon instinctively bucks up again, only to be still held down by Brendon’s hands, as he lets out another sound of pleasure, his eyes squeezing shut again. “A-ah, Bren-”

“Mmm?” Brendon hums, the vibrations going from from his throat to Dallon, which leads to yet one more moan from the taller, his hips bucking up again. Brendon backs off a bit, not releasing him though, as Dallon feels his tongue moving against him again. 

Dallon knew he couldn't last much longer, Brendon being too much for him all at once. His hips once more move up in protest of Brendon’s cold hands, but this time the ghost seems to release his grip slightly on him, just enough to where Dallon ends up hitting the back of his throat. As he does, Brendon hums against him again, the sensation being too much for Dallon as he releases into his mouth, gripping tightly at the couch cushion beneath him. Brendon swallows everything that spills out, not letting a drop of it fall out onto the couch. 

After he feels him finish, Brendon finally releases him, giving it one more lick to make sure he's clean before crawling back up Dallon’s chest and giving him another hard kiss. 

Dallon's mind was reeling, unable to process anything aside from Brendon being close and how totally exhausted he felt afterwards. His hands gripped at Brendon’s back gently as he returned the kiss with as much strength as he could muster. 

Brendon is the first to break it off, moving to rest his head against Dallon’s chest to listen to his heart beat wildly, smiling at the fact that he caused this. “I love you, Dal.”

“Love-love you too…” Dallon was feeling totally drained, literally as well as metaphorically. If Brendon is only here because he shares his energy with the ghost, and sometimes even kissing him left Dallon feeling exhausted, he could only assume that doing what they did would have even more of an effect on his energy loss. That's the only thing that made sense to him right now, anyway. 

Dallon takes a few deep breaths to try and calm his heart rate, holding Brendon close as he tried his best not to drift off. His attempts seemed to be fruitless though, because within only a few seconds after he saw Brendon grab the blanket they had folded and wrap it around both of them, he was out like a light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter took way too long to write im so sorry  
> having an ace write smut isnt the greatest l o l i apologize  
> rip in pieces
> 
> Edit: note to self, don't write smut when u or ur readers don't want it yikes ok I apologize the next chapter will be better I promise I have made error forgive pls   
> ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ


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